comparison is the thief of growth
Comparing your day 1, or day 50, to someone else’s day 100+, robs you of healthy growth.
Sounds obvious, right? But how many times have we compared our performance with that of someone who has so much more experience than we do? How many times have we let that make us feel stupid? Useless? Hopeless, even?
But let’s put it into perspective. Maybe this process of thinking feels normal to you in day to day life, in things like sports or creative pursuits like art or music. But imagine you took an online course in… Astrophysics. Nothing crazy, but you spent a few weeks studying for 20 minutes a day, learning the basics. THEN - you walk into an Astrophysics class at Harvard. And when the professor asks a question and you struggle to find the right answer, does it mean you are stupid? No.
It takes time to become good at things. Time and commitment. Of course, there will always be the prodigies of the world. The kid who composes music at the age of 6. The teen who competes in national gymnastics competitions before they turn 16. And good for them — but that has nothing in relation to you and your journey.
I believe we are each put on this earth to find the thing that sets our souls on fire. Whether it be meeting new people. Traveling. Baking. Making shoes. Business. Programming. And along the way we are going to learn so many things.
Another facet of this is comparison to those who are at the same level as you. Now this is what I struggle with the most. While it is still a challenge to stop comparing yourself with those who have more experience, you can usually logic it out to yourself that it says nothing about your intelligence.
“When I have more time to perfect my craft, I can be as good as them too.”
“I just need more time.”
But what happens when you start working on a skill at the same time as someone, and they still manage to pull ahead? What then?
I have spent years of my life ashamed and embarrassed when I fall behind others in skills that we learned simultaneously. But the thing is, everyone learns differently, and at different speeds. But those differences come with different strengths as well — and that is what we must focus on.
For example, I have a friend who managed to memorize programming strategies much faster than me. We started learning programming around the same time. At first, it continuously made me feel incredibly stupid. I nearly stopped working on my skills altogether, out of the fear that I would “never catch up”. However I soon discovered that our difference in learning styles would reveal our different skill sets. While my friend was great at memorizing and using said strategies in different scenarios, he didn’t understand exactly how they worked since he tended to rush through the explanations that he didn’t need to apply the skills.
Because of my slower learning style, I grasped a better understanding of the building blocks that made up the code. When it was time to teach others, I was much better at bringing things down to a simple, understandable level because I understood the foundations of the strategies we were using, while he struggled to grasp why others were unable to learn as quickly as he did through pure memorizing.
He “learned” faster, but my learning proved to be more solid.
He was able to progress faster, while I was able to teach others more efficiently.
Neither one is better than the other.
Everyone has skills that others wish they had.
It’s time for us to focus less on the skills we wish so badly we could attain, and focus more on the skills we already have, and how we can make them even better.
Signing off,
nexisphere
Sounds obvious, right? But how many times have we compared our performance with that of someone who has so much more experience than we do? How many times have we let that make us feel stupid? Useless? Hopeless, even?
But let’s put it into perspective. Maybe this process of thinking feels normal to you in day to day life, in things like sports or creative pursuits like art or music. But imagine you took an online course in… Astrophysics. Nothing crazy, but you spent a few weeks studying for 20 minutes a day, learning the basics. THEN - you walk into an Astrophysics class at Harvard. And when the professor asks a question and you struggle to find the right answer, does it mean you are stupid? No.
It takes time to become good at things. Time and commitment. Of course, there will always be the prodigies of the world. The kid who composes music at the age of 6. The teen who competes in national gymnastics competitions before they turn 16. And good for them — but that has nothing in relation to you and your journey.
I believe we are each put on this earth to find the thing that sets our souls on fire. Whether it be meeting new people. Traveling. Baking. Making shoes. Business. Programming. And along the way we are going to learn so many things.
Another facet of this is comparison to those who are at the same level as you. Now this is what I struggle with the most. While it is still a challenge to stop comparing yourself with those who have more experience, you can usually logic it out to yourself that it says nothing about your intelligence.
“When I have more time to perfect my craft, I can be as good as them too.”
“I just need more time.”
But what happens when you start working on a skill at the same time as someone, and they still manage to pull ahead? What then?
I have spent years of my life ashamed and embarrassed when I fall behind others in skills that we learned simultaneously. But the thing is, everyone learns differently, and at different speeds. But those differences come with different strengths as well — and that is what we must focus on.
For example, I have a friend who managed to memorize programming strategies much faster than me. We started learning programming around the same time. At first, it continuously made me feel incredibly stupid. I nearly stopped working on my skills altogether, out of the fear that I would “never catch up”. However I soon discovered that our difference in learning styles would reveal our different skill sets. While my friend was great at memorizing and using said strategies in different scenarios, he didn’t understand exactly how they worked since he tended to rush through the explanations that he didn’t need to apply the skills.
Because of my slower learning style, I grasped a better understanding of the building blocks that made up the code. When it was time to teach others, I was much better at bringing things down to a simple, understandable level because I understood the foundations of the strategies we were using, while he struggled to grasp why others were unable to learn as quickly as he did through pure memorizing.
He “learned” faster, but my learning proved to be more solid.
He was able to progress faster, while I was able to teach others more efficiently.
Neither one is better than the other.
Everyone has skills that others wish they had.
It’s time for us to focus less on the skills we wish so badly we could attain, and focus more on the skills we already have, and how we can make them even better.
"Every student can learn, just not on the same day or in the same way."
- George Evans
Signing off,
nexisphere
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