It is not too often that I stop to think about what “everyone else” is doing. Perhaps that is a product of my upbringing, because there was constant talk of what “everyone else” was doing. For some reason, the constant comparison really got to me and I decided at a fairly young age that it did not matter much to me what “everyone else” was doing. I was going to do things my own way regardless of what my peers were doing, and I still do that to this day.
It has occurred to me that other people may think about what other “other people” are doing a little more often than I do. While comparison can sometimes provide useful information, it can also stifle confidence and provoke self doubt. Perhaps more important than whether and how often you concern yourself with what others in your line of work are doing, is what you do with the information that you find.
There is a huge difference between admiring the work that others do and using it as a source of inspiration and seeing the work of others as something to measure yourself against and using their work as a source of comparison. Admiration, to me, is looking at other home – based professionals to see what they are doing, and asking them how they accomplish what they do. I admire every person who works from home, and it is inspiring that as many home – based professionals as there are, each has his or her own way of making it work for themselves and their families. The fact that all of these different people can make working from home work for them gives me faith in my own ability to do so, and the confidence to reach out to others and suggest that they, too, can make it work for them.
If I were instead to look at other people who do work similar to the work that I do and compare myself to them based strictly on numbers like amount of output or what they earn for income, then I might not feel very good about what I have been able to accomplish. Everyone’s life is so different that there are many reasons why some home – based professionals can work thirty hours a week and I’m lucky if I can find fifteen hours. The same goes for income, and anything else I could think to compare.
Instead of using other people as a benchmark of how I am doing with my home – based businesses, I choose to use my own performance as a guide. How am I doing compared to last year? Am I bringing in more income or less, and why? Am I making progress on the goals that I set out for myself? Am I maintaining a good balance between work and home responsibilities? This sort of comparison helps me to make adjustments as needed and to stay on track.
How do you measure your success as a home – based professional?
Photo by seemann on morguefile.com.