Focus on yourself, not on others

One of the things I did in the past that I considered to be really useful was paying attention to what people around me did, to how much progress people made and if I was better than them or not. I was looking at people who were making more money than me thinking they have a secret formula or that they are cheating, and I was looking at people who weren't making as much money as me thinking I'm better than them.

In time I came to realize that it doesn't really matter what people around you do. The only thing that matters is how much progress you can make and if you're happy with your work. Looking at others and trying to compare yourself to them won't get you any more rewards, and it can even lower the quality of your work.

Here's how it works - if you look at the people who are way better than you and make $1000 or more with each post, you may lose some of your motivation. You may think they have an advantage, because they have so many followers, and that you won't be able to get to their level no matter what you do.

If you get to that point, your work may suffer. Some of you may get motivated to work harder and to put more effort in an attempt to make more progress, but others will just want to give up or create whatever they can just to post something, because they won't be able to get that far anyway.

That happens if you look at people who are better than you, but looking at those who are inferior and don't make as much money can also be harmful. If you see too many people making around $0.5 or even $1 with their work while you make $50 - $100, you'll think you're better and you're doing something they can't.

While that can motivate you and boost your self confidence, it can also give you the impression that you're so good, you don't need to try to be better, and that is always a horrible thing to do. You should always try to improve no matter at what level you are, and you should always strive to be a better person than you were yesterday.

However, if you only focus on yourself, and if you do your best to make progress no matter what people around you do, you may get more rewards than you expect and your work may improve significantly. If you spend 90% of your time looking at other people and the content they're creating, you won't have time to look at what you do.

I'm not saying you should ignore everyone around you and only do what you think it's right. You can spend days and hours looking at your work thinking it's the best, and the reason you're not making anything with it is because people don't know how to appreciate it, but that will never help you.

Look at what people do and learn from that, but don't constantly compare yourself to them. You're not in the same position, you don't have the same audience and you don't have the same knowledge. You don't know what they know and they don't know what you know.

You should spend most of your attention trying to make progress, to improve, to make your work better than before and to always move forward. If you want to become one of the best, the only way to do that is to focus on making progress and to improve as much as you can. Anything else doesn't matter.