You should compare yourself to others

I tend to not even notice who wrote the article (or even message on a board) that I'm currently reading, as the message is far more important than the messenger. There are two effects I consider positive from this:

• I might consider new ideas without any previous assumptions, and be open to them even if they come from people I would consider opposed to my beliefs.
• I tend to dismiss the current takes by people who got famous for previous achievements. Quite often, they are now serving recycled cheap opinions, that then generate more engagement because of their status.

Sometimes, I connect the dots months or years later, and realize something I read was written by someone from one of my online spaces — X, Slack, Discord...

This has a peculiar side-effect: the internet somehow feels like a single entity, or at most a handful of people, producing an enormous amount of quality material.

The consequence is that I feel dread at my lack of specific achievements, now being 30 years old. I don't think this is the result of low cognitive capabilities but of lack of focus - and this is actually what drives me to write this, in a very selfish way, as I recently started realizing how much writing helps structure my thoughts.

If I look at my parents and uncles, the PhD seems to be the norm, mostly in scientific fields. Yet I had the luck of observing them behaving in the most stupid ways sometimes.

The earliest memory I have of one of my uncles is me reciting the alphabet. As soon as I finished, he goes like: "Great! Now, backwards!"

There's also a more recent memory of another uncle, this one on my mother's side, that we had dinner with. As I was paraphrasing one of the last research projects my father was conducting "he did this, then that, then...", he starts squinting his eyes, slightly raising his hand... I don't have the time to finish thinking "what the fuck" that he begins his sentence: "You know... Your father is not really intelligent." Obviously I just burst out in laughter.

Sometimes it's less about academics' competitive instincts. It's not necessarily about the hyper-focused computer imaging expert judging the graph theory scientist. Apparently, the graph theory scientist actually spends more time implementing algorithms from other people's research rather than researching his own. That would make him nothing more than an engineer, could we tolerate this? Sometimes it's just a subtle enforcing of the norm.

When I told my mother I would probably not try to go for a PhD after my master's degree, I remember her exact reaction (leaving as-is for my french readers): "Rooooh, tu vas faire un doctorat, Charles, quand même!" "Ohhh, you're going to do a PhD, Charles, come on!" - sorry it's not the same without that guttural french sound, you're definitely missing something there!

I had to convince her for 2 or 3 minutes that it made sense (not that I'm not currently reconsidering that past choice...), as it doesn't open that many doors in France for what I wanted to do, compared to the regular Master's degree. Her reaction was wholesome, she wished the best for me, but it was still akin to learning your child would go to a professional school before turning 18.

One of the key realization moments didn't come from family but from a close friend I respected immensely for his writings. While philosophy is his core interest, he is still technical, as being a smart kid born in the mid-90s tends to push you toward computers. I helped him with his React code for handling reactive components, his JS code for physics simulations (in JS as performance was not a limiting factor, these were learning-oriented), and his Ghost.js instance. But that wasn't what helped the most. I knew he was far better than average, even though he invested so little time compared to anyone who'd gained that knowledge professionally! It wasn't what he was supposed to be good at, and I was the one helping him only on my things, not his. What actually helped the most was inviting him to the coworking space I sometimes hung out at, and seeing him work on his thing. I saw the white page, I saw the need to rewrite multiple times, I saw the hesitations...

And this doesn't dismiss his overall accomplishments. I don't need to see people struggle as a way to cope with my inability to deliver something meaningful. I need to see people I deeply respect struggle too — and that, actually, helps the most when I feel stuck and worthless myself. Everyone has those moments. The only people that somehow don't are the ones that are so used to producing content that it is now quite natural. They had years to experiment and make it seem seamless.

Unfortunately, I also have to reckon with my own lack of consistency. Adapting to the norms of people I didn't choose to be around made me less able to express special interests, and I sometimes wish I could just let go and stop trying to fit in. But even as I reflect on this more, and cutting some connections freed a lot of time for growth, I still have to explain to myself the absence of one or two definitive "great things" that — given the bar set earlier in my life — I should have been able to produce. I always shined in environments where the urgencies were clearly defined, as it was always easier not to jump on the next toy project. Watching friends fail or get their PhDs showed me that focus was the determining factor - even though there is a bias, right? It would be hard to consider them my friends if I didn't consider them smart, and so there is an initial filter? Maybe I should spend more time deciding what will matter in a year, and less time jumping from toy project to toy project. Maybe I should keep self-commitments even when they are suboptimal.

A common piece of advice that wholesome high achievers usually provide is: you shouldn't compare yourself to others. I can't disagree more - you should compare yourself in a smart and productive way.

Seeing my father (apparently a recognized expert in what he does) considered a genius by some previous students while not having a mental model of how a SPA works is reassuring. Having the uncle that wanted me to recite the alphabet backwards ask me "What do you mean by cardio?" when I described Muay Thai was reassuring. Having the uncle that doubted my own father's cognitive capabilities fall for one of the classic iPhone scams was reassuring.

I'm not trying to overplay the "academics don't know shit about the real world" common opinion. I'm insisting that we are all meat bags, with higher or lower measurable capabilities on specific tests - and that we can perform quite differently under even slightly different conditions. The key takeaway is: if you want to be good at something, the most important thing is managing your time according to what you can actually focus on, while honestly assessing your current capabilities.

These anecdotes shouldn't be taken as easy reassurance, but as lessons about the value of focus and hard work towards what matters.

Comparing myself to other people not to dwell or reassure myself, but to grow, is probably the healthiest thing I started doing in the last 5 years.

So, anyway: as a good enough generalist carried by immediate curiosity, the biggest challenge for me seems to be managing focus. And I'm grateful for the people I was able to observe in their making once I grew past both the unhealthy comparisons and the need to stop it altogether - I hope all this resonates with my fellow underachievers.