Your real competitor: Habits

Who’s your real competitor?

Similar SaaS in the same space? Other fellow creators in the indie hacker circle? Products that also fight for the same bucket of attention that your product needs? Or if you go more philosophical, you might even say your real competitor is your past self. Fancy but perhaps somewhat true.

But those never quite hits the spot. It’s either too externalised or too abstract. It blames others, or it blames fluffy nothingness. The locus of control is off.

Here’s a definition that is both pragmatic and concrete:

Your real competitor is your habits.

Your habits of living, thinking, working, resting, relating. They are either building you up, or cutting you down. Slowly, day by day. Subtly, every week and month. The environment influences those habits, but you also have a say in them. You can use the environment to shape your habits, and you can also have a mind over them.

They say, show me your daily habits and I will see your future in ten years.

This is especially obvious with health. Junk food daily with a sedentary lifestyle, and you’ll expect chronically poor health in a decade. Eat clean and exercise everyday, and it’s more likely you’ll be in great health.

So, your habits are your real competitors.
But flip it around, they are also your real collaborators.

You just need to know the switch.