The Secret to a Healthy Relationship with Work

Throughout the first eighteen years of life (or twenty-two if you go to college) we’re all pushed along the same tracks of society. Because of this, it’s not only easy to compare yourself to your peers, but it’s also very logical. If you’d like to understand how you’re doing, you have countless peers to compare yourself to.

Comparing myself to my peers is a trap that I definitely fell into specifically during college. I found studying computer science difficult, and I could quickly understand just how difficult I found it with simple observations — struggling with problem sets my peers found simple, seeing my classmates leave the library before the sun went down, and in some classes identifying my username at the bottom of a live leaderboard during timed coding competitions (I’m serious).

All this is not to say that comparing yourself to others is bad, because I don’t believe it always is. While it’s said that “Comparison is the thief of joy” I prefer to say it can be the thief of joy since comparison, when used correctly, can be extremely motivating. What’s important is that you learn to compare yourself in ways that are beneficial.

If you’re not careful, this unhealthy type of comparison can easily follow you into the workforce. Dropping unhealthy comparison is what has most helped me maintain a healthy relationship with work. The way I was able to do this is with simple logic. I came to the realization that, especially after college, it makes less and less sense to compare yourself to others. Removing this kind of comparison alleviated a lot of the stress I felt when entering the workforce.

Even though most people follow a very similar path until eighteen or twenty-two, past this point everyone’s career becomes a rather random walk. Due to this, the path you take compared to the path that most others take begin to diverge rapidly. In fact, as you continue down your path and others continue down theirs, this variance only grows.

Furthermore, what you and someone else want out of life look very different as time progresses, while you both might want an A in introduction to computer science during the fall semester of your freshman year, I doubt your goals will align if you fast-forward five years into the future.

The beauty of this is that you get to decide what you are happy with. Once you decide your goals, no one else’s path matters, so why would you compare yourself to them?

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