Comparing yourself to others is a dangerous game. You have no idea what the other person has gone through to achieve the success you see from the outside. Very likely it’s more suffering and uncertainty than you could imagine.

Still, there is a benefit to mapping progress against your industry peers. And if you do compare yourself to other people, compare yourself against the best.

Compare Yourself Only To The Most Successful People You Know.

Your bar should be as high as the most prolific and successful person you’ve come across. Their success should seem unimaginable and outrageous to you. That’s how you know you’ve set the bar high enough.

There are two reasons to choose someone so successful:

1) Experience is the only reliable teacher.

You want to expose yourself to the ideas of those with skin in the game at the top of their field. Because experience is the only reliable teacher.

You will learn far more from someone who has done 10x what you want to do and has the scars to prove it than from some random person on the internet shelling out advice.

Skin in the game and experience are what matter.

2) You want to plan much bigger than you think you can achieve.

This is the idea of “punching through your target.” When you aim for something so audacious, the “real” goal you were going after happens almost as a by-product.

When you choose to compare yourself to the best in your field, you’ll automatically think bigger by proxy.

You Don’t Have To Know Someone In Person To Learn From Them… But It Helps!

Many of the people that have changed my life, I’ve never met. I found them on the internet first. People like Naval Ravikant, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and Warren Buffett. Once you expose yourself to them online, you can dig deeper into their backgrounds over years.

Twitter is a great place to start because it opens the door to conversations. It offers a two-way street with the chance to interact with them.

And if you ever get the chance to meet them in person, take it. I saw Charlie Munger speak live in Feb of 2020 in L.A., and it was one of the most memorable moments in my life. If you want to read what I learned, click here.

Another way to learn is to consume their work. I’ve never met Judd Apatow, but he’s someone I constantly learn from by reading the screenplays he’s written, co-written, and produced. Consume quality work regularly to get it into your bones.

All that being said, if you do find a real-life mentor, you’ve found gold.

A real-life mentor who has done what you want to do will save you years.

My wife and I have been lucky enough to have one in screenwriting, and she’s saved us years of suffering. If you can find a mentor or investor with skin in the game on your project, and who can help you with your specific work, don’t let them go.

Be grateful, be humble, and keep learning from them for as long as they’ll let you.

Steal What Works For You, And Forget The Rest.

I don’t mean literally steal from them. I mean steal the tricks and processes of the best in your field, and test them for yourself.

My wife and I are always trying out techniques we see other people using in the scripts and movies we watch. It would be stupid not to!

If you feel bad about it, don’t. Really successful people do this. And if you feel too proud to do it because of your ego… well, it’s really hard to learn something new if you think you know everything already.

Investor Mohnish Pabrai, who’s a self-proclaimed “cloner,” talks about this when he’s asked why other people don’t copy his investment style. He says:

“They're not as shameless as me. They have more ego. To be a great cloner, you have to check your ego at the door.”

So check your ego at the door. Test the methods of the best for yourself. Keep what works, and forget the rest.

To Win For Real, Quit The Comparison Game Entirely.

Always remember: there are no “gurus.” There are only people making things up as they go along.

Because there is no playbook for business success. It is so multi-variant that distilling it down to a few simple practices is impossible. It’s like life: messy and confusing most of the time, with brief moments of clarity and a roller coaster of ups and downs.

No one knows everything. In fact, much of success is making good decisions with very limited information (this includes doing nothing - as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett often do).

To really win, quit the comparison game entirely. As Naval Ravikant says:

“To me, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don’t even play the game, who rise above it. Those are the people who have such internal mental and self-control and self-awareness, they need nothing from anybody else.”

The people at the very top of their field aren’t comparing themselves to anyone else. They’re striving for perfection of their craft, with the understanding they can never reach it. But to improve their craft is to improve themselves. And that’s what gives them meaning.

Start now, and keep going.

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SOURCES

Jorgenson, Eric. The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness. Magrathea Publishing. Kindle Edition.