Labels help us make sense of the world. They give us shortcuts to understand things quickly, like roles, interests, or identities. But while labels can help us connect, they can also limit how we see others (and ourselves) if we rely on them too much.
Not necessarily. Labels can create belonging when used with care, like finding your community or expressing your values. The problem comes when labels box people in instead of opening up conversations about who they really are.
Start by being curious instead of assuming. In business, that means seeing clients or audiences as people, not just “targets” or “types.” When you go beyond the label, you discover what truly motivates them, and that’s where genuine connection begins.
“Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity.” – Thomas J. Watson
Who determines what a word means? Who decides whether someone conforms to a certain label? Who has the right to tell you who you are or what you should be? The answer to all three of these questions is you. Who are you?
From birth till now, we are constantly learning new ways to label things in our world. Label is “any kind of tag attached to something to identify the object or its content”. Labeling is also a way to “describe someone or something in a word or phrase” usually proposed by an external group, not from the person being labeled.
In Software or Web Development, every label consists of a variable, a symbolic name or identifier with a storage location and a value that “contains some known and unknown quantity of information”. The one who determines the variable and the value is the Client, you. Unlike in the real world, labeling for web development comes from the owner of the website or application. You decide what something means and how you name them.
A variable (includes a name, type, and location) is used to reference (refer to) the stored value so the name can be used independently from the specific information it represents. With this independence, during dynamic run time, values of the variables can change over the course of running the program. With varied values, a variable’s storage location is then referenced through new identifiers called aliasing.
In other words, even if the variable’s name, type and location stay the same, its value or meaning can still change over time. Depending on the logic, control flow and how the variable is used in the program, its value can be altered during the program’s run time. Every instance of a program may return a different value for a variable because of the conditions passed through each time.
Since the value changes during run time, it is at first abstract, an idea or a data object, which must be stored in memory. Memory is reused to avoid memory leaks that cause program failure when available memory is drained. Thus, every label a program uses also determines its ability to store memory.
Particularly, your labels affect your experiences, memories and your perception of the world.
A label in business is related to branding. Every business starts with an idea, then the formulation of their vision and values much like a label’s variables and values. These parts are integrated into the personality of the product or service. The ideas, visions and values then become the company’s brand and its style of communication. Labels should come from the business itself.
Businesses control how they are labeled, perceived and differentiated. The company’s vision shows where the founders want to take their ideas to the future. While values illustrates what the company wants to be known for. Values not only come from communicating it to the audience, but also actions the company takes.
What actions do you want to be labeled for? Every label can either be positive or negative depending on how it’s used. If you do not like the binding label placed on you, why follow it?
Why does society love labeling everyone in boxes when no two people are alike? How can anyone conform to someone else’s view of what he/she is labeled as? Why not surprise people instead and break all boundaries that a label has confined you to be someone else you’re not? Would it not be simpler to be the authentic you? Why?
“Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.” – Martina Navratilova
Frances Naty Go is the founder of Goldlilys Media, where she helps mission-driven organizations turn their websites into clear, durable systems that support meaningful work over time. She works with museums, nonprofits, health and wellness brands, higher education, life sciences, travel organizations, and expert-led businesses.
With a background in Computer Science from UC San Diego, Frances brings a thoughtful, strategic approach to building digital experiences that educate, orient, and build trust, without unnecessary complexity.
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