Whilst I think James Douglas Richards sounds better than Douglas James Richards, in real life we very really refer to ourselves by our full name, and Doug Richards sounds like a fine way to introduce yourself.
I’m not sure where you are, but I’ll tell you as someone who legally changed her name, it’s going to be more expensive and take longer than you think. And your family will give you shit. It’s worth it though.
I have two middle names, as it happens (I was named after a cousin who died shortly before I was born, and then my parents just tagged our different-from-his family last name after his three), but most forms only give you space for one, so I usually leave it blank. No problemo.
There are forms online and forms for things like immigration that require something be entered in the middle name/middle initial field. If you don’t have one, that field can become a pain in the ass. It’s not something that happens often or to everybody, and usually it’s just a minor inconvenience. But someone in this thread mentioned skipping a middle name, and this is why I don’t think that’s a good idea:
Having actually processed these kinds of forms, I can tell you that it’s no kind of pain at all. You just leave it blank or draw a line through it. I have never witnessed any negative consequence to doing this.
If someone doesn’t want to have a middle name, this is a ridiculous reason to discourage that choice. These “inconveniences” are rare and minor and likely no longer existing. There are far more serious inconveniences in life. This one is likely to be as inconvenient – if at all – as an untied shoelace.
This anecdote happened about sixty years ago and this particular topic has been the subject of countless jokes and urban legends. The story is that the Army puts “NMI” (“no middle initial”) if you don’t have one. It’s not actually an inconvenience of any kind; it’s just funny.
If you actually read the thread linked, you see that this doesn’t actually cause any problems or delays of any kind. Citizenship and Immigration Services isn’t as idiotic as it’s often made out to be.
Three links and zero actual problems. There is no reason to advise someone to not have a middle name.
As someone who has legally changed their name in real life, I’d say go with it if it is in keeping with who you are.
On my side, it’s been the surname issue. The “correct” surname to go with my patrilineal lineage is a mess and an item of debate and has been changed several times. I was also very much not happy with the surname that my father thought was a good idea, which was one he adopted as an adult. I took the earliest patrilineal surname of which there is record and also the surname of an ancestor who actually accomplished something in his life and ended up a minor historical figure of a midwestern settlement/town (now a small city) in the mid 1800’s. In that city today, there is a street as well as an elementary school that are named for the family, and while that’s not much, it’s a lot more to me than a name that has no connection with the past.