Hacker News Reader

Comment by eksith | Hacker News Reader

Great advice, but... "Don’t compare yourself to others" I've repeatedly found this to be near-impossible. It's just that no matter what standard I've set for myself, just the fact that I see someone doing better automatically makes me think I'm doing something wrong and/or I'm not good enough. That may not be the case, but that's the default thought for me and only after do I actually look into it.

What's worse is that not only is it totally the wrong attitude, I know that it's the wrong attitude. It's very disheartening.

View on HN

I do feel like a lot of these articles tend to tell you to do stuff you already know you should, but provide very little insight into how to go about doing it--don't compare yourself to others, embrace failure, don't be afraid to disappoint others...this is all easier said than done. I know all this. I need strategies to help achieve them.

That said, just being regularly reminded that these are things to strive helps internalize them. This will help us keep an eye out to catch ourselves and try to correct when we compare ourselves to others.

I've had similar problems and saw a talk by Heidi Halvorson that reframed it a bit: Instead of trying to stop the "compare to others" behavior, replace the behavior instead with "compare to my own past performance". I've found measuring and hacking your own improvement is a more useful feedback loop.

I love it.

I don't like "Don't compare yourself to others." To me it has little meaning other than making people feel good. If you are starting at the beginning of just about anything, you occasionally need to compare yourself to the "pros" in order to grow. All things in moderation.

There is nothing wrong in finding inspiration in someone else who is better than you, to help build a better version of yourself. There is a subtle nuance between this and feeling jealous or envious.

The main reason why I used the verb 'compare', is because we are taught to think in terms of adversity/competition when it comes to learning in almost any field. I strongly believe that learning should only be about learning. And it turns out that if you learn the right things and if you work hard, for the sake of being good at something, then you will likely be highly ranked. But that should not be the goal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com