Comparing Yourself with Others Can Be a Useful Tool
A teacher asks Samyuktha, “You got only 60 marks. Karan got 95 marks. Why can’t you get 95?”
Is this good or bad?
Bad — it demonstrates a lack of empathy: if Samyuktha could get 95, she already would have, so demanding she get 95 achieves nothing. It only makes her feel helpless, inculcating a fixed mindset (“I’m only good enough to get 60”) rather than a growth mindset1.
So comparisons are bad, right?
That’s going too far — comparisons are just a tool. When used in the right way, they’re helpful, and when not, they’re not. It’s like a knife, which can be used to cook a tasty meal or to attack someone. It’s not about the tool, but about how you use it.
For example, if Samyuktha challenged herself — “Karan got 95 marks. If he can do it, so can I. I’ll get 95 next time.” — then the tool is being used in the right way.
I was recently talking to a friend, and comparing myself with peers and recognising an area I’ve fallen behind in. He said, “Comparison is bad.” But that’s going too far. The first thing to realise is that I was doing the comparison myself rather than it being externally imposed.
The second thing is that I was comparing myself with peers who are of similar age, have similar career choices (engineering leaders), have similar intellectual ability, and also live in India. Not with a tennis coach. And not with a friend who made completely different tradeoffs in life, like giving up his job and city life, and building a cabin in the hills, without Internet or electricity. He may have breathtaking views, but I don’t compare the views from my balcony to his, because he’s given up other things to get those views, which I’m not willing to.
In fact, comparing is a way to understand what’s possible — income, for example — to ground oneself and have reasonable expectations.
In summary, comparison is not automatically bad. It’s just a tool. Use it well, to your benefit.
FOOTNOTE: The teacher should be a partner and say “Let’s work on this together”, not just a judge. The focus should also be on the next step — what can we do now to get one step better? — rather than the goal, which is not actionable. It’s the teacher’s job to diagnose what the student is missing: maybe she hasn’t understood proof by contradiction, or that one counter-example is all it takes to disprove a theorem. Or maybe she doesn’t feel the psychologically safe to try things out. Whatever it is, the teacher should diagnose her problems and guide her, which he’s not doing if all he says is “Why can’t you get 95?”