Your Competition is You

For years I ran a race against other writers and lost every lap.

Their subscriber counts. Their book deals. The conference stages with their names on the little plastic placards. I tracked all of it like a man counting another man's money. It made me miserable, and worse, it kept me off the page.

Then it landed. They were never the ones I was running against. I was.

The comparison trap

Every creator does this. You watch somebody crushing it in your lane and think, I could do that better. Maybe you could. But while you sit there grading their work, they are out making more of it. The scoreboard keeps moving and you are not on it.

I burned whole evenings scrolling through other people's newsletters, mentally red-penning them. Mine was sharper. Mine was more useful. Mine had a soul. You know what mine also was? Unwritten.

Comparison eats the same fuel creation runs on. It takes the energy that should go into the work and converts it to resentment, clean and total, like a furnace that only makes smoke.

The voice in your head has a roster

Your real obstacle is not some stranger with a bigger list. It is the thing whispering in your skull that you are not ready, that the topic is taken, that so-and-so already did it and did it better, that you have nothing of your own to add.

That voice keeps a running list of reasons to not ship. It is never out of stock.

The creators you admire carry the identical voice. They just learned to talk over it.

What the Air Force taught me

I had troops who would look me in the eye and tell me the thing I was asking for was impossible.

My answer never changed. If you can't go around it, over it, or under it, you have one option left. You go through it.

A problem does not dissolve because you got discouraged. It sits there with its arms crossed, indifferent, waiting. The only thing that moves it is you walking up and putting your weight against it.

The other guy winning is good for you

Stop filing successful creators under competition. File them under proof of concept.

Watch how they build a thing. Notice what problems they actually solve and how they frame the solving. Share their work, buy it, steal the structure and none of the substance. Then find the angle only you can see, because you are the only one standing where you are standing.

When somebody in your space wins, the market gets bigger. Their win manufactures appetite for the thing you make. It does not eat your slice. It bakes a second pie.

My father on worry

My dad handed me a piece of advice about worry that fits this perfectly.

Can you change it right now? If no, drop it. Put it down and look at the solution instead of the problem. If yes, then also drop it, and go change the thing.

Somebody else's subscriber count sits in the first category. Outside your hands. Let it go. Your own work sits in the second. Fully yours. So go fix it.

Track the right scoreboard

Quit auditing everyone else's metrics. Watch these instead.

• Are you shipping on a rhythm, or only when the mood strikes?
• Is your stuff solving an actual problem for an actual person?
• Are your sentences cleaner this month than last?
• Do the people who read you feel like they know you?

Those are the only contests with your name in them. And you are the lone entrant.

Your next move

Unfollow the accounts that leave you feeling small. Mute them, unsubscribe, whatever it takes. Keep exactly one creator who makes you want to build something, and study them like a mechanic studies an engine.

The world has plenty of versions of them. It is short exactly one of you.

So forget the shadows. The only writer worth beating is the one you were yesterday.