Comparisons
Skiing is the one area where I enjoy comparisons, since I usually come out on top 😎
The pandemic taught me a lot about myself, but exiting it (or the peak, at least) may have taught me even more. Re-engaging with friends and seeing life kick back into full speed meant that I had a goal; to adjust to the same trajectory that pre-pandemic Trevor was on. The following are some thoughts that - despite my > 1 year hiatus from writing - have persisted throughout COVID and continue to be top of mind today.
If you’re just skimming, here’s a quick recap of this post:
There are many ways to create an average, and it is typically a result of my social circle. I generally consider myself above average, but struggle when comparing to the average of different circles.
Comparisons are a dead end, and never lead to happiness. I’ll always want more, and any rationalizations only yield temporary gratification.
Setting my personal values helps to ground me to realistic goals, and focus on things that give me happiness and fulfillment. I may not think I’ve made a lot of progress, but I have.
Only I can determine what I value; there are no objective truths, as they are crafted by my circle and how I choose to interpret them. If I can decide on these and hold true to them, then external comparisons should have considerably less impact than they do today.
If you’re not, welcome aboard :)
The average
One thing I disliked about watching the news during the pandemic was not the ‘doom and gloom’, but the repeated statistics. I felt like my municipality, province, and country was constantly being compared to others in terms of how well we were doing. How many cases we had, the number of deaths, the number of hospitalizations, etc.
It became quite clear that there was an average — and for the start of 2021, Canada trailed it. We were on the tail end of developed countries in getting vaccinations, and our constant jumping in & out of lockdown raised the question of whether our faithful political leaders really knew what they were doing (we realize now, they did not).
The average for countries was not the only point of comparison. Within Canada, certain provinces trailed others, where Quebec introduced curfews and restrictions that exceeded what Ontario had in place, and were significantly greater than Alberta. We can further break this down — Northern Ontario (with a more dispersed population) meant that restrictions might be taken less seriously, compared to myself as a resident of Toronto, where I sat in my condo wondering when things would improve.
The same concept for COVID can be drawn to everyday life. We create and observe averages in friend groups and social circles, looking at education, fitness, material wealth, and other factors. For some people, myself included, their ‘average’ is actually much higher than the general populous.
Take for example, marriage & family planning. For a social circle that begins their career right after graduation at 18, settles down in their early 20s, and begins to have kids by their mid-20s, the odd friend who postpones marriage until 30 is an outlier. In contrast, take a social circle where everyone pursues a high-powered profession (i.e. law) which requires several years of school. The average for marriage might be closer to 30, and having kids, closer to 35.
Neither average is inherently good or bad. They are both based on the sample they are compared to. My social circle might look at parents in their mid-20s and be quite surprised, struggling to rationalize their decision. The same parents (and their respective social circles) might look to my friend group and shake their heads, claiming that we have wasted some of our prime child-rearing years, in terms of energy & attention.
I think of ‘the average’ often, because while I acknowledge that my life circumstances are above average in many areas, I still feel a lot is to be desired when comparing it to my average.
Happiness from comparisons
What value does comparing oneself have? In many ways, it’s a narrative that we can believe in. It’s much easier to convince myself that I’m on the right track & things are going fine, if I can find a benchmark that validates my current progress.
Income is an easy factor for comparison. I can feel good knowing that my income means I am well above average, but Canadian census data isn’t where I draw comparison. For my general profession, Growth Marketing Managers raise the bar, but that number would be considerably higher if I drew comparison to fellow Dorm Room Fund alumni or tech entrepreneurs with more than 5 employees. At some point, I start to look the average, or even worse, fall below it.
So what does that mean for comparisons? I can conclude that I’ll never be happy if I am constantly comparing myself. There’s a popular video from Justin Kan about the hedonic treadmill and how he was unhappy after selling Twitch to Amazon for $1B(!!!), because his friends were running Dropbox and Facebook at much higher valuations.
I wholeheartedly agree, and find that I often rationalize my progress when conducting comparisons. Here are some examples that provide temporary gratification:
“I’m 25 but that person who is doing better is 30”
“They have a higher valuation, but my business makes more revenue”
“They make more revenue, but my business is solving a more unique”
All of these splits are ways to ignore the root question — why am I doing what I’m doing? Am I motivated every day for a purpose that surpasses a comparison or end goal set by someone else?
Setting my values
Intrinsic motivation & goal setting is not an easy feat. It often requires introspection that can be uncomfortable, challenging beliefs that may have been driving me for several years. I recently went through this exercise, as a variation of what is recommended in this post, with the goal of moving beyond outcomes and looking more directly at activities that align with my values.
Here are some of the things I noticed:
Integrity is my most important value. I want to make sure that in anything I do, I’m doing right by everyone involved. This can include clients, employees, friends, family, etc.
I won’t sacrifice everything for a bigger outcome. There is a ‘win at all costs’ mentality for some founders, neglecting health, relationships, etc. for the growth of their business. I don’t see this as being worth it, mainly because I’m not enthralled by the massive outcomes that some founders shoot for.
Family planning is my #1 goal. If I fast forward 20 years, I would most unhappy if I’m not married with kids. Everything else (body image, material wealth, etc.) takes a back seat to this.
In doing this exercise, I was able to draw some surprising conclusions about my path & the way I was operating:
The ideal outcome is smaller than I thought. I often thought $10M by 30 was the goal. In fact, I could accomplish all of my goals with closer to $2M, and picking some goals over others means that I could require even less.
I’m building what is right for me. Reflecting on the past few years, I’ve made less linear progress than I would’ve liked. However, many of the decisions - trying new career paths, pivoting a successful business, etc. - were a consequence of building what I was truly excited about.
I’ve made a lot of personal progress. I was chatting with a friend recently, reflecting on our lives ~ 4.5 years ago. Work-wise, I’m a much better entrepreneur than I was then, but more importantly, I have so many things (happy relationship, strong support system, etc.) that I didn’t have at that point, and took years to cultivate.
What determines a value?
My final point on the note of comparisons is courtesy of several conversations with my girlfriend about making progress, working hard enough, and feeling productive. To set the stage, we were talking about the contrast between our high schools - hers in Owen Sound, where completing a lap year was common, and mine in Mississauga, where it wasn’t a question of going to university, but which university you got into.
I mentioned how it likely marginalized someone in my friend group if they didn’t want to go to university, and it would take time to adjust / find friends who created their new average. She flagged the opposite; a group of college-bound students where one decides to pick university and gets ostracized, which I balked at; wouldn’t this new average be a higher one than the last? A group of trades students cheering for their friend who is becoming an engineer, like Ben Affleck did for Leo DiCaprio in Good Will Hunting?
She humbled me with a simple observation: what if higher education wasn’t a value in that friend group? Specifically, if going to university was seen as the wrong / bad choice in that group? I caught myself and thought about other parallels for my average — where making more money wasn’t valued or raising capital wasn’t valued. How would this affect the comparisons I put so much value in?
I typically think in a world of absolutes and objectivity, so a question like “is making more money a good thing” is never given second thought. I realized that to be happy in my path, reassured with the trajectory but also the effort I put in, I needed to reexamine what my values were absent of external comparisons, and focus on what I truly saw as having longevity and contributing to my satisfaction.
Conclusion
Comparisons can be a great motivation but they can also be toxic. The most toxic of those comparisons are ones that I make myself to others, with no prompting. Those are the comparisons that keep me up at night, instill doubt into my path, and make me wonder if I’m truly putting in the effort that I should be to be successful.
I’ll end this post with two observations:
The people I value in my life (support system) root for me regardless and want the best outcome for me. That outcome is one that I need to determine alone, not by external comparisons.
My values will change over time, as they did in the reflection from 4.5 years ago. The best I can do is try to live my life according to the values I recognize today, and reassess at regular intervals.
P.S: Thank you to everyone who pinged me about writing and missing my blog posts - namely my Uncle Don, my old neighbour Jordan, and my mom. Here’s to re-establishing consistency!