"How am I doing?"
Ed Koch used to ask it of his voters, and it's a question that everyone wants answered.
When you’re working on improving yourself, you want to know how you’re doing. But with whom should you compare yourself? What’s the best standard? Answer: Your past self. Comparing yourself to others is usually not all that helpful because you don’t know their histories as well as you know yours. Perhaps the incredible athlete running next to you is . . . just that: An incredible athlete who happens to work out at your gym. Or perhaps the younger person who you are besting in tennis is recovering from mononucleosis. Or maybe . . . You get the point. 
You could also look toward your future self. But your future self, as you imagine him/her, is probably not your real future self. It’s probably a better self. We are optimistic creatures, after all. No, look back in time instead. To the way you used to be. It is in your memory, faulty as it is, that you will find good information and even better inspiration. But how should you look back?
Some tips:
1. Focus on a recent past self. I’m not qualified to get into an extended discussion of the philosopher’s axe, but I think we can all agree that your more recent past self is in some sense more you than a more distant past self. If you’re 40, comparing your fitness and endurance level to your 20-year old athletic self is like comparing yourself to someone else. Focusing on a recent past self gives you good information about what you were like.
2. Go deep for the information. Go beyond remembering what you were you like (fatter/thinner, lazier/more active, introverted/extroverted) and try to recall your behaviors. What were you doing that helped? What your were doing that didn't? Learn from your past.
3. If your memory tells you that you’ve improved, then that’s great! Feel inspired. Feel the movement upward! Whatever you’re doing, keep on doing it!
4. If you’re on a bit of a backslide, then use your memory of what you used to be like. Figure out how to get back there.
So, stop looking around for a person with whom to compare yourself. Look in the mirror and then look back . . .
3 comments:
Ian - at a risk of developing whip-lash nodding in agreement with you, I absolutely agree with this approach.
In all activities that I endeavour to improve at, I always notice that there's a real tendency to look at people that have been doing it for longer than me, or that I simply perceive as "better" than myself.
But this isn't a way to track improvement. Like you've said, the best guide to determining how far you've come is to look to your past.
One of the reasons I specifically started blogging about squash and poker was so that I would maintain an online record of my progress.
Every time that I felt like I was in a rut, (which is just the way our improvement curves typically operate), I go back to my blog archives and read about the things I was having trouble with a month ago, two months ago, six months ago, and a year ago.
Thanks for the refresher!
Ian, while I completely agree with your theory in the short term, it does lead one (an older one, perhaps...me, maybe) to consider this theory in regard to how it plays out over decades.
What I have chosen to do is learn to compare how much I am enjoying an activity which includes measurement--golf is my example--rather than comparing scores.
I'm actually much better at enjoying four hours on the links today than I was twenty years ago when I could shoot a lower score.
What is the quality of the experience, rather than the quantitative judgment? It will come to matter one day, even if not today.
Excellent point Rick! Yes, choosing what standard to use and keeping in mind that aging leads to decline in some, not all, abilities is certainly key.
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