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Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

#41

Post by Yokohiii »

HN used to be much more technical and practical. Now you have much more posts about history, biology, astronomy, many thing that are very very far from being (practical) CS. I can only assume that HN readers want to feel even more sophisticated with far fetched intellectual topics. I think HN will make most persons feel miserable just like social networks do, on facebook others have more friends on HN others are smarter than you.

You should stop reading HN. I've been contemplating this for myself for some time. I have to look around more, but so far I see reddits programming subreddit is more condensed and superior if you just want to keep track on programming news.

For your current situation I can tell you that everything is fine. I've got into programming as an autodidact later than you with zero experience and my school career was average at best. Just take your time and go really deep into a single programming language, exercise with meaningless projects, use stack overflow or friendly forums to discuss problems. Just don't compare to others, there are always smarter people than you. But if you train the practical parts really hard it becomes meaningless because the results are the same.

Also if you want to learn something about humbleness, read Herman Hesse's Siddartha, just don't dive into esoterics afterwards.

Good Luck.

[edit] Nice article about depression and social media: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/04/08/new-stud...

Re: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

#42

Post by onoyoudont »

johw wrote: post #32

Comparing to others is not the problem. Focusing on differences is. The solution is to focus on similarities instead of differences. By focusing on differences, you will always find something to let you feel inferior, let you stop tackling new things, maybe even saying things to others you do not really mean because you feel down at that moment. By focusing on similarities, you will boost yourself. You will see that…

"The solution is to focus on similarities instead of differences."

Disagree. OP: Focus on what makes you unique. And that probably isn't the obvious stuff. You're in school, surrounded by folks whose talent is that they're good in school. That's not what makes most successful folks successful in life, I can assure you. Or happy.

Maybe you're just natively a generalist and surrounded by folks happy to be specialists. That's great: the world spins because of folks who see the big picture and understand how to connect lessons learned from disparate fields.

How about this: Read Andrew Hargadon's book, "How Breakthroughs Happen"... and then maybe Be That Guy, the one who builds teams and connects networks of experts and puts the whole thing together and makes shit HAPPEN.

School's a terrible place for learning this about yourself, since it's a reproductive mechanism for academics. But today t's pretty instrumental in gaining the necessary credentials and pedigrees. Do your best, but take this as an opportunity to learn about yourself and your broader capabilities.

Onward!

Re: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

#43

Post by cperciva »

michaelmcmillan wrote: post #38
cperciva wrote: post #28

The multiplicity of casual friendships online has led to an interesting new phenomenon: Because people preferentially broadcast their successes, we tend to get the feeling that everybody else is more successful than ourselves. I don't think you can avoid comparing yourself to others; what you can do is try to keep in mind that life is a mix of good and bad, and even if all you manage to do is avoid the worst of the b…

I appreciate your openness Colin, thanks.

I admit that I thought twice about posting that. But I figured an example would make what I was saying much clearer, and it wouldn't be right to use anyone else as an example if I wasn't willing to use myself as an example.

Re: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

#45

Post by bshimmin »

wishiknew wrote: post #36

What's that quote again, 'while in his 30s Julius Caesar once cried because he felt he hadn't done a tenth of what Alexander the Great had done at the same age'? Don't worry about people being faster than you. Build simple sites/apps (read Pat Flynn's blog rather than HN), see which one sticks, and improve it over time. Don't hope for a massive success, build something simple but useful to a limited audience. That's…

"It's a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years." — Tom Lehrer

Re: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

#46

Post by epalmer »

pieterbreed wrote: post #20

Welcome to life. Don't worry though. Everything will be OK. (The things I'm about to say is/are true for me. So is most of what everyone else here is saying. While it's good that you are asking your peers for help, the answers you will get won't make "sense" until you discover them for yourself. (Like the A-HA moment when you finally grok a mathematics proof or a famous algorithm). This will require effort from you.)…

I agree that there is a spiritual growth component here. As another response said, go find someplace to volunteer and help others. Do this doing something you love, even if you think you are not that good at it. For example help code.org, black girls code, FIRST robotics etc.

In terms of HN and how smart people are here: Remember there are a lot of people that participate in HN and the experts and sometimes so called experts come out and respond to the posts in their knowledge domain. So some of these people do know a lot more about a topic than most of us.

I read HN almost daily and don't understand most of the topics and responses. It doesn't bother me at all. If it bothers you you might want to stop for awhile.

I'm 62 and was miserable working at a bank/financial institution. I quit and started working at a university (web services) and volunteering in STEM education of K12 students 9 years ago today. I felt stupid at the bank until I left and realized the people that were above me were clueless. Clueless people promote clueless people. So my biggest advance in my journey started when I was 53 years old.

Now I'm in a much better place. Take care of yourself. Exercise, moderate your vices (if you have them) and give back. Be grateful for what you have and journal that every day until you think in terms of gratitude as your new mental model. And yes meditate and give prayers of thanks for what you have.

You have taken a big step asking for help.

Re: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

#47

Post by studentrob »

Find a way to get some confidence. Learn something new. I'm reading / listening to "Quantum memory power" by Dominic O'Brien right now. There are some fun tricks in there that make memorizing things trivial. He points out this builds confidence, though I just think it's fun. After that... Take it day by day, and take it easy on yourself

Re: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

#48

Post by johw »

onoyoudont wrote: post #42
johw wrote: post #32

Comparing to others is not the problem. Focusing on differences is. The solution is to focus on similarities instead of differences. By focusing on differences, you will always find something to let you feel inferior, let you stop tackling new things, maybe even saying things to others you do not really mean because you feel down at that moment. By focusing on similarities, you will boost yourself. You will see that…

"The solution is to focus on similarities instead of differences." Disagree. OP: Focus on what makes you unique. And that probably isn't the obvious stuff. You're in school, surrounded by folks whose talent is that they're good in school. That's not what makes most successful folks successful in life, I can assure you. Or happy. Maybe you're just natively a generalist and surrounded by folks happy to be specialists.…

There are always multiple ways to tackle a problem. Both ways help. However I do not find it useful to start out with your approach, because it is more complicated, takes more action and is hard to communicate, especially in the context of a single post.

Re: Ask HN: How do I stop comparing myself to others?

#49

Post by nyc »

A recent article in the Economist explains why comparing to others makes us unhappy. In short, we keep comparing ourselves to people who are better off: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21677223...

That said, I think there are concrete things you could do to improve your current situation. First, it sounds like you now know what to do. That's excellent! At 22, you are not far behind at all.

Early in grad school, things weren't going well and I felt like I was falling behind my peers. I ended up finding a lot of comfort knowing there was a CS professor in my department who had trained as a doctor but then decided his passion was in CS. He basically had to start over in school. To know that one could get a later start and still achieve success was incredibly reassuring.

That said, I think you might also benefit from having a mentor. I have found it useful to have someone experienced and successful from which to learn and model myself after. They have given me the confidence to go and tackle larger problems and helped me move forward when things are looking pretty bleak.

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