Don’t Benchmark Yourself Against Normal | Hacker News Reader

Don’t Benchmark Yourself Against Normal

sebastianmarshall.com

46 pointsjoeyespo24 comments

I have a feeling few people on HN have this problem.

I bet a much more pernicious problem for people on HN is the opposite; comparing yourself to the most successful 0.1% of your field and wondering why you're not as successful yet.

So, for HN, I'd suggest the opposite. Take a step back once in a while and do compare yourself to normal. Not to gloat, but to put all of your "successful in the first world problems" in perspective.

Yep. I have a solid amount of respect for Sebastian, but in my particular case it's absolutely vital to take a step back and take a breath once in a while.

I'm so focused on how far behind I am, and how much farther I want to go, that it's a huge source of stress. So, whenever the stress starts to get to me, I sit back and I compare where I am now to where I was last year at this time (and the year before...). I realize that, even though the bank account still isn't where I want it to be, that I can do so much more now than I could last year; that even though there are projects still languishing, a bunch of them have been completed.

On the other hand, I know people who are content so long as they can find someone else that's somehow below them to compare themselves to. "I might drink a lot, but at least I don't drink as much as..." That seems to be a trap that just leads further and further down a hole of bad behavior. Pushing yourself to keep pace with exceptional people is a good way to never fall into that trap.

As badly as I want to get to a particular destination one day, I'd like to enjoy the journey a little bit along the way. To use a PCT thru-hiking metaphor, trying to keep up with Scott Williamson would make the trip of a lifetime a lot less fun.

Even comparing yourself to other achievers isn't as big a problem as what some people do:

>It's bad enough comparing yourself to Isaac Newton without comparing yourself to Kimball Kinnison.

Eliezer Yudkowsky, http://lesswrong.com/lw/y7/the_super_happy_people_38/

I often use the somewhat memey "first world problems" idiom to put things in perspective for my team.

This is silly, benchmarking against normal is the only reprieve I get from worrying that I'm 24 and knowing that I am thus too old to have done a lot of things that I feel I should have by now, like publish a fiction book or two, found a successful startup, publish a couple of academic articles of the transformative kind to computer science and so on. At least publish any academic articles at all.

I mean, do you know that Turing was just 24 when he published the Turing Machine paper? And a mathematician whose name I can't remember right now, practically revolutionized set theory at ~22.

There's a bunch of other examples like that.

Hell, I have friends my age who've published more than one academic paper. Some of them highly acclaimed (enough so to present them at MIT)

Comparing to normal every once in a while is definitely the only way to keep one's sanity and allow oneself to get some sleep now and anon. OP has no idea what they're talking about.

Don't read up on Gauss ;)

I'm just shy of 31 and I have to say when I look back 23-24 was the peak of feeling like I was "too old" to accomplish anything meaningful.

I think one of the hardest things for me to see at 24 was just how non-linear and strange life is, and likewise how truly meaningless it is to try to establish a useful system of measurement and comparison between individuals.

For what life advice from a stranger on HN is worth: Get out of the game of comparing yourself to others as fast as you can. Focus on what you think is interesting, and also take a few moments now and again to really appreciate the wonder that is life. Aside from being happier, you'll most likely accomplish more if you don't spend energy casting yourself in the shadows of others.

Oh I know, I keep getting penalized from everyone for "not caring what anyone thinks and wants to compare me to"[1]

But, y'know, sometimes you still want some perspective on how you're doing :)

[1] for instance my mum and grandparents keep throwing people my age who are "starting real adult lives already" at my face, whereas I'm just playing around with freelancing instead of looking for a job job

Ugh. "playing around with freelancing instead of looking for a job". I hate what society has become in regards to jobs. I find it so backwards that so many people believe what everyone should do is go find some boring huge company to slave away at until the majority of your life is over.

It's never too late to learn new things. It may be difficult when you are older but many mathematicians were late-lerners [1]. It's more important to be honestly interested in what you are doing. You should be pursuing your own goals not someone's else. That will bring you satisfaction and motivation for working and innovating in your field.

[1] http://mathoverflow.net/questions/3591/mathematicians-who-we...

This is solid advice, and similar to the "Why settle for average?" pieces. Basically if you convince your brain that you have 'succeeded' then you lose your motivation to do more.

Whereas if you don't try to score it, you can keep pushing on the problem.

The challenge though is that you have to also be in the frame of mind that the journey is the reward, not the destination. If you have convinced yourself that you will only be successful if you reach some 'endpoint' you can become lost and depressed when that endpoint turns out to be on the other side of a really wide chasm. I love playing piano, and I suck at it. When I think about how not-musical my efforts at reproducing music can be, I can get depressed. But when I'm exploring all the weird and clever ways that notes and harmonies can interact I have a blast. It just doesn't sound like music to most people :-).

Why benchmark at all?

Benchmark yourself against people "lower" than you, you feel unsatisfied; against people "higher", you feel depressed.

Why not just do what makes you happy?

Some people use benchmarks for various reasons other than simply measurement of personal growth or achievement. In especially those other cases, this needs to be considered seriously.

For example, I have a friend who keeps wanting advice on how to get better at things. One thing I've been telling her a lot recently is to stop making assumptions. She makes an astounding number of assumptions in everyday life, and it leads to poor decision-making.

Case in point, she asked me if there was anything she could do to recover a document when her word processor crashed, but she hadn't saved yet. Then she assumed that it was an impossible task and set about writing a brand new document. I stopped her and got her to think about her problem. She was able to figure out that autosave functions existed in modern word processors, and she was able to figure out how hers was configured. Bam, there's the autosaved document.

She was ecstatic. But then I reminded her to stop making assumptions, and she got really frustrated with me and asked, "Don't you ever make assumptions?"

If you're benchmarking your personal achievement against others for the sake of personal satisfaction and happiness, yes, you can have the results that you discussed above.

But if you're doing anything else with your benchmark, such as making excuses for why you can't or won't get things done, then OP's point about benchmarking is a very good one. There are many reasons why one might benchmark against others. And in some of those cases, OP has a very valid point where everyone should take heed.

My problem is the opposite. I always benchmark myself against the best in the world and am then disappointed when I'm nowhere near them.

>Benchmark against your own potential, and against your desires.

In my case, doing this has been extremely depressing. This is a habit I need to unlearn, lest it ruin my happiness and my life.

It's crazy. Benchmark against your recent past, not your dreams.

Reminds me of Marcus Aurelius:

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.

Huh, it seems to me that the first way produces both/either aspiration or ambition, whereas the second way produces complacency...

This reminds me of Derek Sivers' excellent "There's no speed limit": http://sivers.org/kimo

I think that a good strategy of self-improvement is setting the bar a little bit higher than you can reach. You can achieve much with many little steps. Every step you take reminds you that you're making progress and motivates you to work.

I experienced it when I was studying mathematics. I read modern mathematics textbooks/papers at a snail's pace because mathematics is like a tall tower - in order to get to higher levels you have to climb the lower. When I looked at what I learned in a single day I didn't see much progress at all. But after a few months of learning I saw that I'd progressed much.

Benchmarking yourself can be dangerous. Some people will find it motivating. Others will find it a burden. Personally I'd rather benchmark against myself - it's more fulfilling to beat myself than to beat some stranger. It certainly doesn't feel good to start thinking of yourself as +20% better than your friends.

Good thought-provoking piece.

If you really want to achieve something, you need to benchmark what you have accomplished against your goals; not benchmark yourself against other people, or even against your earlier self, its the accomplishment that matters, not you.

I'd extend the title of the post with ... but definitely don't benchmark yourself against the folks on HN either.

there was a similar article sometime back on HN.It spoke about achievement (ie) if one should compare them self to Silicon Valley stars or not . It addressed issues of peer pressure and depression among folks in the Valley. I ve been looking for that , Does anyone recollect which article it was ?

It really doesnt matter as long as you are working on hard problems.

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