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Why 'I am a writer' works better than 'I should write'

A small change in language — from a behaviour to an identity — can change whether people follow through. Here's how to try it on a goal you care about.

By Calibra · · 4 min read

"I should write more." "I need to run." "I have to save." The verbs are honest. They also keep the work outside you, as a task you might or might not pick up.

There is a quieter way to say the same thing: I am a writer. I am someone who runs. I am a person who looks after money. Same actions. Different self.

Possible selves are already a plan

Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius called these pictures possible selves: the people we might become, want to become, or are afraid of becoming. They are not daydreams at the edge of the mind. They are the form that a hope or a fear takes when it becomes personal, and they work as incentives. You move toward a hoped-for self and away from a feared one.1

That is close to the work in your future self feels like a stranger. The gap is not only time. It is identity. If the person you are becoming does not feel like you, their goals stay optional.

Nouns versus verbs

Language can pull a behaviour into the self, or leave it as a chore.

Christopher Bryan, Gregory Walton, Todd Rogers and Carol Dweck asked people about voting with two nearly identical phrasings: how important is voting, or how important is being a voter. In two US elections, people who saw the identity wording were more likely to actually vote, according to official records. In the larger of those field experiments, turnout was 89.9% in the noun condition and 79.0% in the verb condition. The people in the study were already likely voters (they had filled in a survey close to election day), so the numbers are high in both groups. The gap is still a real effect of a few words.2

The reverse works for identities people do not want. In later experiments, Bryan, Gabrielle Adams and Benoît Monin gave people a chance to claim money they had not earned. Instructions said either "Please don't cheat" or "Please don't be a cheater." People who heard the identity wording claimed less. In that condition, the researchers found no evidence of cheating at all.3

The pattern is simple. We protect the kind of person we take ourselves to be. A task can be skipped. A self is harder to betray.

How to try on an identity this week

Pick one goal you already care about. Not a should. Something you would be sad to abandon.

  1. Name it as a person, not a project. "I am someone who lives by the water," not "I should move." "I am a person who writes," not "finish the book."
  2. Describe an ordinary Tuesday. What does that person actually do before noon. Keep it small and physical. This is the same move as picturing the process, aimed at who you are.
  3. Speak it in the present tense. Out loud if you can. "I write before the house wakes up." Awkward is fine. You are listening for whether it sounds like you.
  4. Do one act that person would do today. Ten minutes. One call. One walk. The act is evidence, not a test you can fail.
  5. When you skip a day, keep the noun. You did not stop being that person. You missed a scene. Tomorrow you return. If the skip usually turns into a week, read why missing one day makes you quit.

How it sounds in practice

  • Task: "I should call my parents more." Identity: "I am a son who stays in touch." Tuesday: a walk home, phone in hand, ten minutes.
  • Task: "I need to get my finances in order." Identity: "I am someone who looks at the numbers without flinching." Tuesday: open the account for the length of a song.
  • Task: "I have to start the studio." Identity: "I am a person who makes things in the morning." Tuesday: one sketch before the first meeting.

If the noun feels like a performance, it is too big. Cut it until it could be true this week.

What this is not

It is not a magic phrase. Identity language helps when the identity is one you already value. Bryan's team did not claim it would make people do things they think they should not do.

It is also not a costume. If the identity you pick is someone else's idea of a good life, the noun will feel fake and you will drop it. Choose the self you would defend.

The takeaway

Goals tell you what to do. Identity tells you who is doing it. Turn one intention into a noun, describe a normal day as that person, and take one small action that belongs to them. The future self gets easier to act for when they already have a name.

Sources

  1. Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41(9), 954–969. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.9.954 ↩
  2. Bryan, C. J., Walton, G. M., Rogers, T., & Dweck, C. S. (2011). Motivating voter turnout by invoking the self. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(31), 12653–12656. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1103343108 ↩
  3. Bryan, C. J., Adams, G. S., & Monin, B. (2013). When cheating would make you a cheater: Implicating the self prevents unethical behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(4), 1001–1005. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030655 ↩