Having some downtime after work and feeling a little disconnected from my friends I decided to scroll through my social media. I like a few posts, laugh at a few stories, and eventually put my phone down. I feel a little more connected to all my friends but suddenly I have a feeling of inadequacy. What just happened, I somehow feel worse than when I started.

Share and Compare

Scrolling through social media to find a sense of connection is like pulling off planks of wood from the hull of a ship to cover a small leak. You're temporarily satisfying your need for connection but you've fallen into a comparison trap without knowing it.

"Comparison Is the Thief of Joy" - Theodore Roosevelt

Whether you like it or not, you're always implicitly comparing yourself to others as your scroll through your social feed.

• You see a video of John lifting two plates and you're impressed but it also reminds you why haven't you reached that goal yet.
• You see a picture of Jane going on a holiday and you can't help but be jealous as you prepare for your 9-5 tomorrow morning.
• You see Bob post he got a promotion whilst you're still struggling with your day to day.

The problem is you end up comparing your entire life to the highlight reel of somebody else's without seeing all the ups and downs that come with it. In fact, you're not comparing the highlight reel of a single person but rather mentally creating a model of the perfect person. You merge John, Jane and Bob to a single entity who just got a promotion, is fit and is currently on a holiday. You do not see the hours John spent waking up before dawn being at the gym and the overtime Jane and Bob spent slaving away to achieve their current state.

Dare to Compare

So what should you do? Should you drop all social media find a cave somewhere and never talk to another human being again? Comparing yourself to others isn't all bad news. As with everything, social media is a tool that depending on how you use it can be helpful or detrimental. When you compare yourself with others you can get a sense of motivation and drive for you to improve yourself. You learn from what they've done well to reach their goals and learn from their techniques.

Take the example of seeing John on your feed. I'm sure he also has other posts explaining his routine and nutrition that you can learn from. You can also find other people who are similar to John and expand your learning!

The first step, with any problem, is acknowledging the situation. As Angela Duckwork said on Can You Stop Comparing Yourself With Other People the first step is noticing that you just compared yourself with someone else and understand if it gives you a motivational boost or makes you feel overwhelmed.

Additionally, one of the techniques is to focus your comparison on key areas and people. The amount of comparisons we can do in this hyper-connected society would drive everyone to be overwhelmed. By picking a few areas where you're going to tell yourself "Okay, I am going to compare myself to this person and try to learn how they achieved these goals" as opposed to comparing to everyone and being the perfect human being helps you from getting overwhelmed.

One of my favorite quotes is:

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. - Jim Rohn

What I want to point out here is the five people. The tail end of interactions provides fewer benefits with more downsides. The over-saturation of comparisons takes you away from being focused and extracting valuable information. Focus on rich quality interactions on social media and in real life as opposed to plentiful shallow encounters.

Prepare to Compare

Life is always about continually learning and experimenting. I've explained my understanding of the Comparison Conundrum and now want to provide some actionable items. These are items that I will / have tried myself and should be a basis for experimentation as opposed to a solution.

Focused Feed

The ability to have a high signal to noise ratio is with your social media feeds is critical to not be overrun. I went through a purge of my Instagram to remove all non-friends as I found following influencers pushed me into the direction of overwhelming comparisons. However, I did still want to compare and learn with high-quality people in the tech field and thus set up a twitter following only tech people. This separation allows me to understand that when I'm on Instagram I'm attempting to fill my sense of connection but am explicitly not trying to compare myself to others. However, on twitter, I spend more time learning about people's ideas and successes.

Focused Areas

A typical theme that I try to follow is depth, not breadth. Write down the areas that you're focused on improving and shape your social media feed around them. That will allow your feed to motivate you in the area you want to work on. For example, if I decide to focus on playing guitar over going to the gym I want to specialize my feed on guitar players. If I have a feed filled with shredded bodybuilders I'll feel a sense of inadequacy as I focus on my guitar skills and not my exercise habits. Of course, you can keep both feeds and be aware of what your focus is but I like to shape my environment to reinforce my automatic behavior.

Disconnect to Reconnect

Cal Newport in his book Digital Minimalism talks about taking a digital detox. Take a break from social media and slowly bring things back in where you recognize the value. Break out of the mindless cycle and take a third-person perspective on which types of comparison are beneficial and which are not.

Compare But Be Aware

If there is one takeaway from this blog it is simply be aware of what is happening. Understand that social media is a tool and reflect to see if you're using it to the best of your ability. Don't fall into the trap of doing something just because you've always been doing it. Do this without any judgment of yourself.

What sparked this blog post was in-fact I attempted to go on a 1-week social media detox and lasted only a few days. I understood that social media was making me feel worse but yet I kept coming back to it. Recognizing without being critical is always the first step to making improvements.

So, go out there and inspire yourself by comparing to others. Just don't forget to be aware of the comparison conundrum.