Sometimes I think about how the order in which we consume ideas affects our acceptance or rejection of new ideas.
I happened to re-read Paul Graham’s Keep Your Identity Small last week followed by listening to James Clear’s Atomic Habits for the first time this week.
While I was listening to James Clear’s section on Identity-based Habits, I remember a moment thinking to myself, “wait, didn’t Paul Graham say to keep your identity small?”
Everything I was listening to in that Atomic Habits chapter made sense. Essentially, he riffs on the idea that assigning yourself an identity makes it easier for you to take action in directions that you want. For example, if you label yourself a writer, it makes it easier to take on writing habits.
In Paul’s essay, however, he more so talks about thinking clearly and not being a person who is easily inflamed.
Upon further inspection, Paul has certainly taken on identities that have been functional for him - being a writer, the founder of YC, a venture capitalist, etc.
So how do we reconcile these two versions of “identity”?
Clear is referring to strengthening your internal, practical, and behavioral identity while PG is referring to softening your external, dogmatic, and ideological identity.
This closer examination makes me wonder how I may have altered my reception to other ideas that have similar surface-level conflicts.
Both framings are functional in their own way, but indeed focused on different nuances.
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An aside: I’ve always slept on Atomic Habits as a book because it had become so mainstream, but I actually listened to it end-to-end and found it to be one of the most practical books that I’ve consumed in a while. Highly recommended. I think I want to go on a streak of finding other things that are mainstream that I’ve might’ve missed out on.