You were fine until you opened the phone. Someone got the promotion. Someone bought the house. Someone you went to school with is engaged, and someone else has written a book. Ten minutes later you are less pleased with your own day than you were. I compare myself to other people.
Noticing how others are doing is ordinary, and a feed mostly shows people's best weeks.
01
What you do when you compare
It may happen almost at once.
You see what they have and figure out where that puts you. You do it with strangers, with friends, with people ten years older. You may look up someone you have not spoken to in years, just to see.
Afterward you are flat, or you start planning. A new course, a new routine, a deadline.
People tell you to stop comparing and to stay off the phone. Staying off the phone helps for as long as you stay off it. It doesn't say what the comparing is checking for.
It can cost you your own good news, which may stop counting the moment you see someone's better news. And it may cost a friendship or two, when being glad for them gets hard.
02
What the comparing may be checking
"Stillness is where it catches me."
The comparing may be a way of finding out where you stand, so you are not caught unprepared. Under Ahead, someone else's progress may register as you falling behind. Even when something feels right I start checking. Is there a better one? Am I getting a fair deal? It wears me out.
Read about Ahead →"I need to be chosen."
The comparing may be about who gets picked. Under Chosen, the person with the better job or the happier-looking marriage may be the one who would be preferred over you. Sometimes I wonder if they'd be happier with somebody more like them.
Read about Chosen →"If I'm not producing, I don't know who I am."
The comparing may be about what you have to show. Under Output, someone else's visible achievement may make your own stop counting. I watch people I think are less capable get ahead of me, and it eats at me.
Read about Output →These are three of several, and it may be none of them.
03
What is under the rule
Under Ahead, the fear may be that if you stop managing, something goes wrong again. What would answer it is safety that doesn't require vigilance.
Under Chosen, the fear may be that if you are not selected, you were not enough to select. What would answer it is belonging that isn't competitive.
Under Output, the fear may be that without achievement you don't matter. What would answer it is worth that doesn't require performance.
Comparing well answers none of the three, which may be why the relief doesn't last when it happens.
04
The questions that separate them
When you compare yourself, are you checking whether you'd be picked, or whether you've fallen behind?
Picked is the Chosen answer. Behind is the Ahead answer.
Output has its own question against each of the other two. Against Ahead: is the problem that you're not producing, or that you're not covered? Not producing is the Output answer. Not covered is the Ahead answer. Against Chosen: which is worse, having nothing to show, or having plenty to show and still being passed over? Nothing to show is the Output answer. Passed over is the Chosen answer.
If none of them sorts it, there is not enough to tell yet, and that counts.
Some comparing is useful. Checking a salary against the market, or learning from someone further along, is information. For Ahead in particular, a period that really is unstable calls for watchfulness, and the check is whether it continues once things are stable.
Each answer takes one explanation off the list. That is all subtraction asks of a question.
05
One thing to try this week
The next time you catch yourself comparing, write one line with two parts: what they had, and what you concluded about yourself.
Do it three times this week.
Then read the three lines together and see whether the conclusions are about being behind, about not being picked, or about not having enough to show.
The feeling this can leave is on Why Do I Always Feel Behind?