Your own race

You have to run your own race. Problems begin the moment you start comparing your results to someone who is playing under different conditions.

• The 40-year-old entrepreneur with three kids has different constraints than the single 27-year-old.
• A painter with 20 years of practice shouldn’t be the benchmark for someone in year two.
• Someone caring for aging parents is not in the same position as someone with no obligations outside work.

Play your own game. Emphasize gradual progress and keep the comparison internal. Are you getting a little better today?"
– James Clear

When you spend a lot of time on Indie Twitter, you compare a lot more than you realise, and invariably end up running someone else’s race.

I’ve done it.

Seeing a young, single 20-year-old white male indie hacker crush the MRR game by grinding 24/7 in a few months, compared to married with kid 46-year-old me trying to survive, feed the family and hobbling along.

Watching how a developer seemingly new to indie hacking, but build with so much finesse and speed, you swear he’s talented. But he was actually a senior dev, over 10 years coding experience, and lots of experience working in startups. While self-taught, school of hodge-podge coding me still scared of dealing with backend.

Witnessing another go viral time after time, so smooth at marketing, only to learn his tweets had zero engagement for years but he kept at it. While I’m still trying to sound clever with my tweets,

Truth is, you’ll never win those races.
Because it belongs to them.
The race is for them, of them.

The only race you win is the one you pave.