Compare and Despair
Only compare yourself to yourself yesterday.
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 82%
Dumas warns that 'compare and despair is real': measuring yourself against people years ahead or behind you leads only to despair. The one comparison worth making is against yourself yesterday. You won't win that comparison every single day, and that's fine — but if you win it more days than not, you'll win over time. It's a mindset tool for protecting motivation during a long, slow growth journey.
Origin
Reflecting on his own slow, steady growth from 2012, Dumas offers this as the antidote to the discouragement creators feel comparing their early numbers to established peers.
Core principles
- 01Comparing yourself to others who are years ahead or behind produces despair, not progress.
- 02The only useful benchmark is who you were yesterday.
- 03You won't win the comparison against yourself every day, and that's fine.
- 04Winning that comparison more days than not compounds into winning over time.
How to run it
- 1
Catch the comparison
Notice when you're measuring your progress against someone else who is ahead of or behind you.
Watch out Others' journeys are years apart from yours — the comparison is almost never apples to apples.
- 2
Reset the benchmark to yesterday-you
Replace the comparison with a single question: am I winning against who I was yesterday?
- 3
Play the long trend
Accept that you won't win every day, and focus on winning more days than not so progress compounds over time.
Pro tip One lost day is not the trend — judge yourself over weeks, not hours.
In the wild
Dumas didn't snap his fingers and get a million listens; he grew slowly over years and credits consistency plus refusing to compare himself to others for keeping him going.
→ Sustained motivation through years of gradual growth to over 1.4 million monthly listens.
Common mistakes
Benchmarking against people at a different stage
Comparing yourself to those years ahead or having sudden success breeds despair because the contexts aren't comparable.
Judging yourself on a single bad day
You won't win the self-comparison every day; treating one off day as failure misses that the trend is what matters.
Is it for you?
Best for
Creators and entrepreneurs prone to discouragement watching others' highlight reels.
Not ideal for
Situations that genuinely require competitive benchmarking against peers or the market.
From the transcript
“never compare yourself to anybody except yourself yesterday if you're winning that comparison of you yesterday then you're winning it life”
“compare and despair is real so don't do it”
From the episode
John Lee Dumas: Productivity Hacks to Work Smarter, Not Harder
John Lee Dumas