Rohan's blog

You want to show others that you are better. Because that is something you derive your value from. Nothing wrong in that – just a way to live.

For example, if you are living your life then you can choose to be happy when you get something in your craft or when others fail. It’s a choice you make. But when you see others as your enemy, it is easy to take the short cut.

Because you want to feel good. So when others acknowledge that you got better, you feel it as a win despite what the reality is.

So you focus on the short cut which isn’t a complete picture.

Let’s say you have a channel on Youtube. If you want to be happy when you do better in your craft, connect with your audience then you will compare yourself with your past performances. But when you derive happiness with comparison to others then you will try to sneak in with fake data.

For example, you will choose to showcase the number at which you are winning. Let’s say your competitor has 1000 subscribers. So you will show off that you have 1500 subscribers. When the number of comments and conversion you get is low. You were busy in the show off number that the actual metric which matters for your channel is left behind.

In a nutshell, it doesn’t help. Stop being happy by showing some graph or data which you know deep down means nothing.

Yes, compare and grow from your past performances to reach a better place. Be happy with the progress you made by pushing yourself and not getting busy in cheap tricks.

Or let’s take an example of the progress you made in your role at office. Doing the job you know the most important metric is to know how many customers got converted. But what if you choose to show how many meetings you held or how many overtime you did.

When you do that, you are choosing to showcase a side with a bias specifically choosing data points which might support your bias.

Because your boss doesn’t know better than you. Yes, you can fool people with the self chosen graph and data. But deep down, you will be aware of this.

So stop focusing on such things. And do the work that matters to you. And if you gotta report, choose the data which you know is the important.