In Ryan Holiday’s book, Ego Is the Enemy, there is an excellent section called “To Be or To Do.” The idea is that you can easily get lost in being when you should instead focus on doing.

Being is the trappings. Doing is the work.

Looking back on my law career, I see this in myself. As a young lawyer, I was hung up on the trappings of lawyer-ism. I bought a leather briefcase and a fancy raincoat that, after nearly 30 years in Southern California, still looked new when I gave it away a few years ago. I had a miniature statue of the scales of justice in my office. No, really, I did. When I look back, I cringe.

At this point, with decades in this racket, I know what makes a good lawyer (or a good MacSparky, or a good husband, or a good whatever). The answer, in hindsight, is doing the work.

To be a good lawyer, I needed to “do” a lot of lawyering. To be a good MacSparky, I need to do a lot of MacSparky-ing. The briefcase never mattered.

I have been trying to remind myself of this lately by changing some of my internal verbs and nouns. In my head, I don’t think of myself as a lawyer or a MacSparky, but instead as someone who helps people overcome legal challenges or someone who teaches people how to use Apple technology to serve their purpose in life.

I focus on the action. It may seem like a subtle change, but it is an important one. By focusing on my actions as the craftsman, I stop making assumptions about my abilities or purported entitlements.

Instead, I force myself to prove it through my efforts. This is how I judge myself, not by the result but by the work. This alternate mindset, by its existence, removes the possibility for me to assume anything I make will be worth a damn simply because of who I am. Instead, I need to prove it every time.