Your professional journey is unique; don’t get caught in the comparison trap

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

You’re scrolling through BlueSky and see a post from one of your colleagues describing a paper that was just published in a high-impact journal. The next post is from another colleague sharing that they have received grant funding. A third post announces the winners of an Early Career Researcher award from a major society. As you continue scrolling, more successes fly by. You realize you’ve now spent the past 30 minutes looking at other people’s achievements, wondering why you’re not having similar success. You close BlueSky, feeling overwhelmed and mediocre.

The comparison trap is pervasive in academia.

The reason you get caught up in comparing yourself to, and even modelling the behaviour of, your colleagues is because there’s no official playbook on how to succeed in academia. Without clear guidance or instruction, it makes sense to look around and see what other people in your space are doing. Inevitably, you start to measure your own progress against their achievements.

To make matters worse, you know that during the promotion and review process, your department will seek out letters from external reviewers. Those external reviewers will then be explicitly asked to compare you to others who are more senior in your field. ‘Would the candidate likely be given tenure at your institution?’ or ‘Comment on who, in the field, the candidate would be similar to at the same stage of career’.  Providing an answer to these questions seems to reassure committees. If you are like these other colleagues—established and well-funded—then you’re probably a safe bet to keep around a while longer.

The problem with comparing yourself to your colleagues is two-fold. One, it just isn’t possible for people to have similar careers. You and your colleagues may be different ages, different genders, different races. You may have grown up in different environments, both personally and professionally. Consequently, you have different lived experiences that impact how you approach your work, and also, frankly, how you are treated, supported, and mentored by others. You also have different strengths and weaknesses: maybe you’re a gifted theorist, and the colleague you are trying to model is a computational wizard. That means the types of questions you are excited to address, the methods you use, and the types of journals you submit to, are all going to be different.

Two, when you compare your career to someone else’s, you are not using the same type of data for each side of the equation. You’re comparing your full and complex life, with all of its ups and downs, to someone else’s highlight reel. Of course you’re going to feel bad as a result.  You don’t see the ideas they abandoned after multiple grant rejections. You don’t see the family dinners that were sacrificed to time spent working late. You don’t see how different the final manuscript was from their very first draft. You don’t hear the critiques they received from a department chair, or witness the inter-departmental politics causing stress.

You can guard against comparison by being laser-focused on your strategic vision for your career. No two people are going to have the same strategic vision. These are your dreams, and, as a result, the path to achieving your goals is necessarily your own unique journey. If you see a colleague who has obtained a position or an award that you would like to have someday, do connect with them over coffee, and ask them for guidance, or any lessons learned. But then take an active approach, applying and adapting that guidance in the context of your unique strategic vision and personal circumstance—make these new-found insights work for you.

You can also guard against comparison by reframing how you approach social media. Social media provides a means to connect with colleagues, build your networks, improve your outreach, and understand where the latest conversations are heading in your field. Use social media as a way to learn new things, to get inspiration, or to even solicit collaborators for your next big project.  Use it to connect with others, not to keep tabs on them.

Getting out of the comparison trap takes practice. Start by being mindful of how you’re feeling when you see someone else succeed. Be happy for them, and remember that you also have the opportunity to achieve your strategic vision. If you need help planning your unique path to success, reach out, I’d love to hear what your goals are and help you achieve them. 

Next week: Be specific with your goals to achieve your strategic vision