COMPARISON IS THE THIEF OF JOY

If you are not familiar with, or are not currently using www.steemwhales.com, I encourage you to check out the site now. It is a very useful site, especially for a newbie (such as myself). Hats off to @heimindanger for taking the time and energy to create this site for us to freely use.

My heading may seem to be contradictory to advising the use of a website where you can compare your current ranking to everyone else on Steemit, but it isn't. Perhaps a more accurate heading would be "Inaccurate Comparison is the Thief of Jo". Let me explain:

After reading many of the posts by veteran Steemians with advice to minnows, (the best way to learn is from someone who has successfully been through the same thing), I became aware that most of the dolphins and whales on Steemit, have been here for a while, and put countless hours of effort and made great sacrifices to get to where they are now. Some have been here longer than others and some have put in less time and effort than others, but overall, their success is in part due to their hard work.

When you look at my ranking on www.steemwhales.com, you could get discouraged that you're so far "down the list". However, to get a true picture, you need to look at two other things.

How many total Steemit accounts exist?

The answer to this is listed at the bottom of the "Rankings" tab on the steemwhales site. Instead of looking at how many people are "ahead" of you, realize how far you've come! While a lot of the accounts that are included in the total accounts number are "dead" accounts where the user is no longer active, that also means that simply by being here and using Steemit, you have more perseverance than many others!

How long has everyone else been on Steemit?

Currently this is a little harder to discover. You could look up each of the accounts that are close to you to see the month and year they joined Steemit. Or maybe you see a Steemian who seems to be very successful, you could look at their home page to see when they joined. One thing you will not be able to see, though, is how many hours they have invested in this site through posting, reading, responding, using Steemchat, etc.

I would like to put a call out to @heimindanger with a suggestion for another improvement to the site. If the date a user joined Steemit was another column, it could allow for the comparison with other users of similar "Steemit age". Ideally, if a time period range could be selected, it would also give the ability to see a user's ranking with other similar "aged" Steemians. I am not a programmer and have no idea if this would be a lot of work, or an easy modification, but I think it would help to improve an already very helpful tool.

Steam on, my friends!