There are two ways to measure how you’re doing: Against yourself and against others. Internal vs. external benchmarks.
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: A lighter version of this happens in business and finance, which are home to so many staggeringly successful people whose lives are broadcast over a staggeringly loud social media system.
If you measure your career solely relative to them – the external benchmark – you’re on the neverending path of feeling inadequate, incompetent, and poor. Nothing you do will ever feel that great because someone is always smarter than you, more popular than you, better looking than you, getting richer faster than you, and making sure you know about it.
It’s not until you focus on internal benchmarks and see how far you’ve come, relative to where you began – the gap between today and your own cost basis – that you have a good view of where you stand and what you’ve accomplished.)
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: People play different games, some of which might not be related to your own goals. Investors range from nineteen-year-olds learning how to day trade to endowments with century-long time horizons and everything in between. But so often there is just one external benchmark: How you have performed in the last 365 days relative to the S&P 500. Can we not imagine a world where different people have different goals stemming from the different games they play?
Another version: Working 100-hour weeks and squeezing every penny out of your career potential is the ultimate goal for some people, but a nightmare for others whose priority is, say, quality time with their kids.)
- View Highlight
-
- [note::When you feel inadequate relative to other people, ask "What kinds of games do these people play and am I actually a player?" Often times, you're not actually interested in playing their game and they'd be pretty awful at yours.
In any case, it's good to be biased towards valuing internal benchmarks as opposed to external, as internal is something you can reliably measure against.]

(highlight:: The only way to consistently do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, for as long as you want, is to detach from other peoples’ benchmarks and judge everything simply by whether you’re happy and fulfilled, which varies person to person.
I recently had dinner with a financial advisor who has a client that gets angry when hearing about portfolio returns or benchmarks. None of that matters to the client; All he cares about is whether he has enough money to keep traveling with his wife. That’s his sole benchmark.
“Everyone else can stress out about outperforming each other,” he says. “I just like Europe.”
Maybe he’s got it all figured out.)
- View Highlight
-
- [note::When talking to people about performance, strive to understand the benchmarks THEY care about. That is, their values, goals, motivations. Metrics don't matter to those who don't care about them.]

There are two ways to measure how you’re doing: Against yourself and against others. Internal vs. external benchmarks.
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: A lighter version of this happens in business and finance, which are home to so many staggeringly successful people whose lives are broadcast over a staggeringly loud social media system.
If you measure your career solely relative to them – the external benchmark – you’re on the neverending path of feeling inadequate, incompetent, and poor. Nothing you do will ever feel that great because someone is always smarter than you, more popular than you, better looking than you, getting richer faster than you, and making sure you know about it.
It’s not until you focus on internal benchmarks and see how far you’ve come, relative to where you began – the gap between today and your own cost basis – that you have a good view of where you stand and what you’ve accomplished.)
- View Highlight
-

(highlight:: People play different games, some of which might not be related to your own goals. Investors range from nineteen-year-olds learning how to day trade to endowments with century-long time horizons and everything in between. But so often there is just one external benchmark: How you have performed in the last 365 days relative to the S&P 500. Can we not imagine a world where different people have different goals stemming from the different games they play?
Another version: Working 100-hour weeks and squeezing every penny out of your career potential is the ultimate goal for some people, but a nightmare for others whose priority is, say, quality time with their kids.)
- View Highlight
-
- [note::When you feel inadequate relative to other people, ask "What kinds of games do these people play and am I actually a player?" Often times, you're not actually interested in playing their game and they'd be pretty awful at yours.
In any case, it's good to be biased towards valuing internal benchmarks as opposed to external, as internal is something you can reliably measure against.]

(highlight:: The only way to consistently do what you want, when you want, with whom you want, for as long as you want, is to detach from other peoples’ benchmarks and judge everything simply by whether you’re happy and fulfilled, which varies person to person.
I recently had dinner with a financial advisor who has a client that gets angry when hearing about portfolio returns or benchmarks. None of that matters to the client; All he cares about is whether he has enough money to keep traveling with his wife. That’s his sole benchmark.
“Everyone else can stress out about outperforming each other,” he says. “I just like Europe.”
Maybe he’s got it all figured out.)
- View Highlight
-
- [note::When talking to people about performance, strive to understand the benchmarks THEY care about. That is, their values, goals, motivations. Metrics don't matter to those who don't care about them.]