Naiman Labs Newsletter #31. Compare yourself with yourself

Hi friends!

I am sure you all notice this our brain has natural instinct to compare. We compare everything with everything.

We constantly make comparison not only as human beings. Companies also constantly make comparison. However in business world we usually put it in more sophisticated terms. For example we often use benchmarking in market research and strategy.

As an HR professional I often work with compensation. One of the key aspects of reward analysis I perform is market benchmarking. I compare how do we pay to our team members compared to other companies at the market. Also the entire concept of compensation management is based 3 “fairness” and all of them require a lot of deep and careful comparison: internal fairness (within the company), external fairness (company and market) and perceived fairness (how employees perceive their compensation).

Or even imagine you start a side hustle. You have been doing some work for the recent weeks. And you naturally start comparing your results with someone else’s results, to see if they have more followers, likes, views, subscribers, purchases etc.

Why do we compare?

I believe we often use comparison as a natural built-in GPS system. We look at others to check if we are going in the right direction. “Other have already done it so it seems okay and I can do it too.”

We often compare ourselves with someone who is better in some dimension - “Upward comparison”. We can be inspired, or we can be tempted to repeat their path to repeat their success. “If someone has already done it - i can repeat their success”.

Another reason for comparison is to check your progress. We often even subconsciously ask ourselves: “Am I more successful than that guy?”

Unfortunately we also often use the comparison to remove the responsibility form our shoulders. “I have 500 subscribers, but this guy has just 300 subscribers, my situation is not bad”. This is a “downward comparison” - comparing ourselves with someone “worse” in some dimension. “I am not worse than others”.

Today this comparison race is inevitable - we constantly compare ourselves with others due to social media, because it’s flying at us from every direction. We cannot avoid it.

🔝 Comparison is productive when you use it to adapt, to get inspired or to work on yourself.

It will be productive when we don’t just contrast ourselves, but when we use this comparison to get some inspiration and some ideas for our development.

To do so check how similar you are already with someone you compare yourself with. What skills, characteristics, resources, and even shortcomings do you have in common? How can you leverage those strengths and account for those weaknesses or obstacles in a way that lets you succeed as much as they have?

🧭 Comparison can be quite productive as well when it is used as a GPS. To check your direction and to anticipate some changes on the “market” you operate. You can often see the trends or changes that you need to follow and implement. It applies for both people and companies as well. That’s why benchmarking analysis is very important.

📈 It is very helpful to compare your previous actions with your current actions, your previous decisions with your current decisions. What do you do differently? What have you learnt?

This will be the indication and illustration of your growth. Understanding of your growth is very motivating and is very important for your further development.

I firmly believe that in most cases it is more important to compare yourself with yourself rather than with the others. There’s no need to copy someone else’s success, there’s no need to beat yourself because someone’s life looks better than yours. Use their cases as inspiration or as a guidance, as a source for learning only.

It also applies not only for people but for companies. In HR field I often hear that the first thing many professionals do when they start working on HR projects is to ask others for examples to copy paste. For example back in consulting days I remember many clients asking “what KPIs do other companies use for Sales function?”. Yes, it is important to understand the market, but in this case it is way more productive to know what do YOU want to measure, what are YOUR company’s goals.

Let’s wrap it up:

Comparison is essential and natural we’ll never avoid so let’s use it for the best.

To make comparison more productive don’t just compare yourself and don’t fall into this toxic pool of constant comparing. When you compare try to create action plan for change. try using it as a GPS to navigate your own growth.

Focus more on comparing yourself with yourself rather then with others. Your growth is often much more important rather than your position in contrast with others.

(You can read more in this article)

Have a great week ahead!