A job title fits on a name badge. You don’t. Keep some of yourself off the clock.

Work will take as much identity as you hand over, partly because it returns structure and status in exchange. The trouble surfaces later, when the job changes and the rest of you has gone unused for years. What you do is a real part of you, and it was never the whole map.

Keep at least one thing in your week that work has no claim on and gains nothing from. Watch the answer you give when someone asks what you do. Add a second sentence about something else and notice how differently that conversation goes.