The Diversified Identity Portfolio
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Stolzoff's central model treats identity the way an investor treats a portfolio: concentration in a single holding — work — produces spectacular fragility. He notes that the identities inside us (sibling, friend, guitar player, community member) behave like plants; they need water and attention or they wither, and if work is the only one you irrigate, it becomes a very narrow platform to balance on. Researchers call the alternative greater self-complexity, and it predicts resilience: one disparaging comment from a boss on a Friday can consume your whole life if the work pillar is the only pillar. The method is to surface candidate identities, anchor them in evergreen traits rather than output, convert them into identity-based habits, and defend real calendar time for them, because meaning comes from the opportunity cost you pay.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Audit what you actually value with the calendar test
Stolzoff quotes an old professor: show me your calendar and I'll tell you what you value. Compare the values you claim (community, health, family) against where your hours genuinely went last month. Unreinforced values are, in his words, shallow.
Pro tip Do this on real calendar data from the past four weeks, not from memory.
- 2
Surface candidate identities from childhood and idle time
Rather than a values quiz, ask what you liked doing as a kid — pickup sports, drawing, hanging out doing nothing — and what you would choose on an idle Sunday with no obligations. Those are clues to identities you were given and identities you get to choose.
Pro tip Write an 'ideal Sunday' menu alongside the more familiar 'ideal Tuesday' exercise, so free time has a default.
- 3
Anchor on evergreen traits, not productivity-tethered ones
Define yourself with characteristics no market, boss or illness can revoke — generous friend, someone who shows up for their local community, naturally intellectually curious — rather than only role-based labels like 'teacher' or 'swimmer' that depend on output.
Watch out Role labels feel more concrete, which is exactly why they collapse hardest when the role ends.
- 4
Convert each identity into an identity-based habit
Stolzoff walks the concentric-circles model: outcome goals on the outside (lose 50 pounds), process goals next (gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays), and identity at the centre (I am a person who values physical health). Habits built at the identity ring prove far stickier.
Pro tip Phrase the commitment as 'I am someone who…' before you schedule the process.
Watch out Outcome-only goals are immediately falsifiable — you can hit them and find the altar was the wrong one.
- 5
Start absurdly small
A psychologist Stolzoff interviewed sees ambitious patients respond to 'invest outside work' by signing up for an Ironman or 52 books — turning leisure into quantified labour. Her counter: start with one run, one book, or fifteen minutes of reading a night, and grow from there.
Watch out If the new identity needs a tracker and a target on day one, you have rebuilt work under another name.
- 6
Pay the opportunity cost deliberately
Borrowing Cal Newport's rare-and-valuable framing, Stolzoff proposes identity capital: identities that are valuable because they reinforce the person you want to be, and rare because they take real time. Being at the gym when you could be on the couch, or with a friend when you could be working, is what makes it meaningful.
Pro tip Treat the visible trade-off as the signal you are actually investing, not as evidence you are slacking.
In the wild
In high school Ali's identity rested almost entirely on academic performance. At medical school everyone had been top of their year and he was suddenly 'bang average'. Maintaining that single pillar would have meant working relentlessly hard for a rank he did not want badly enough. Prompted by a Mark Manson post on diversifying identity, he leaned into close-up magic, then a first business, then music, then YouTube — until academic performance became one arrow in a quiver rather than the only one.
→ A single failing pillar stopped being an existential threat because several others were already load-bearing.
Liz, profiled in Stolzoff's book, was a public school teacher in Colorado who happily worked 80-hour weeks and drew almost all her self-worth from the job. After contracting Lyme disease while hiking in Vermont, she went from teaching to being spoon-fed chicken soup by her mother; her productivity was no longer in her control. Learning from the chronically ill community, she began defining herself by evergreen traits — generous friend, someone who shows up locally, naturally curious — rather than by output.
→ Her sense of self survived the loss of the job that had previously supplied all of it.
Common mistakes
Making every hobby legible
Stolzoff notes the pressure to sell the baked goods at the farmers market or post the paintings on Instagram for the claps. Once a hobby is performed for applause it runs on extrinsic fuel, which is far less sustainable than mastery, autonomy and purpose — and it stops functioning as a separate identity from work.
Counting passive consumption as investment
Coming home with only enough energy to switch on a series is not the same as watering an identity. Stolzoff is explicit that active hobbies — guitar, a language, a book club — both rejuvenate you and give you another way of conceiving who you are; passive viewing does neither.
Only noticing the gap on a free Saturday
Ali describes an open London Saturday where he genuinely did not know what to do with himself, and a friend's suggestion to build a menu of hobby options felt lame. Identities cannot be conjured on demand; if you wait until you have free time to decide what you value, the default is more work.
From the transcript
“but all of these other identities guitar player traveler artists that exist within us need attention they're sort of like plants they need water and…”
“much as an investor benefits from diversifying the stocks in their portfolio we too benefit from diversifying the sources of meaning and identity and purpose…”
“I had this old Professor that used to say show me your calendar and I'll I'll tell you what you value”
From the episode
Life’s Meaning Outside of Work - Simone Stolzoff
Simone Stolzoff