Comparison vs Competition

How to feel Competitive without Comparing with others?

Demystifying why Competition is considered good but there’s a lot of repulsion on comparisons?

In a competitive environment your chance of learning and efforting is increased while if you compare yourselves with others it either demotivates you or you may choose unethical ways to move ahead. So how to not do comparison?

Comparison: Evaluating or estimating similarities or dissimilarities between two things or people.

Competition: Striving to gain or win by appropriate actions.

Is it bad to compare?

What we tend to do is we compare the results. Results have units (like the first chapter of physics) and Inputs are unitless or can be brought to common units.

1. Comparing Output 1 with Output 2 is bad. (You will either feel overconfident if your’s is more or jealus of other if your’s less.
2. Comparing box 1 with box 2 is also wrong. Let’s wait for the name of the boxes
3. Comparing Input1 with Input 2 is legit.

Reasons:

1. Why it is not right to compare outputs?

• Unit of outputs may be different (Your goal may be different from other’s)
• Rate of production different ( Your rate of learning/growing/progressing is different from other’s)
• Even if similar goal, Your current knowledge or the progress already achieved is different from other’s.

2. Why it is not right to compare box?

• Box performace, parameters, quality is different ( Resources you are using to achieve a goal(even if common to other’s) might be different).
• Even if box performance is similar, box incidents are different such as breakdown, cooldown (resting required if burned out by working more).
• Every second of happenings with your box(your life) is different from others.

3. Why it is right to compare inputs?

• This one is a simpler, assuming everything else to be constant, who do you think produce more output. Obviously the one with the more input(considering input is aligned with the required job at hand).

Still not convinced let’s take a real life scenario for each case:

1. Suppose one person(P1) is doing a job and earning 10 lacs. Other(P2) might be doing business earning 20 lacs. Is it ok to compare that P2 is doing right and P1 is not?

• No P1 might be doing other things, he might be more satisfied or he might be investing his time in his hobbies or some sport or skill. This is very diversed states, it could be two persons in different field of jobs or anything like that.

2. Let’s say two students are preparing for an elite exam(UPSC lets say). Common goal case. One of them might be 20 years old(P1) and other might be older(P2). Can you compare them? What if older one might be more busy in responsibilities. What if P1 (younger) is more into party and not that serious. What if one of them is going through crisis(health/financial).

3. I am gonna take non common goal for this. Let’s say person P1 wants to achieve higher in academics and Person P2 wants to grow in business. What’s th input? Lets say number of hours put in respective direction. Can we compare them of course. We cant compare the progress because length of journey is different, starting point is different, destination itself is different. But we can say whoever runs steadily and fast will reach first.

For two different people, doing their own hustle: Starting point, destination, length of the path. Everything is different. The types and number of challenges are galaxies apart. But one thing is right to compare i.e. amount of input(in common units of-course).

The Bottomline:

• Compare your result only with yourself. (Some people might know this keep reading there’s more…)
• Compare your input with evryone in room (Be the hardest worker in room).
• Compare inputs with same units or no units. You cant compare a quantifying input(number of hours) with a CREATIVE input(being with nature to enhance your artform or grow your creative side).
• Feel competitive, but most with yourself.
• If you see someone with better results, just head up and say I am gonna put so much input that i’ll exceed ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶’̶s ̶ my own results and i’ll do it constantly.
• Take a healthy competition and never use unethical ways to reach the destination.