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I disagree about ignoring the leaderboards. Rather than ignoring it, accept the fact that you are not the best. By ignoring the leaderboard you will have no cl

I disagree about ignoring the leaderboards. Rather than ignoring it, accept the fact that you are not the best. By ignoring the leaderboard you will have no clue if you are improving or not. The only way to know that for sure is to see how you compare to others. For instance I took up chess, and I can easily see if I improve when my ELO rises. If I didn't have ELO or leaderboards, I'd have no idea. I can never judge my improvement accurately if I can't compare it with others. And I'd rather say I'm strong enough to be okay with not being the best, as opposed to having to pretend that others and leaderboards don't exist. It seems like this strategy to not compare oneself to others is just turning your head to an issue, because you can't handle it.

biren34 6y ago
There's a very subtle distinction here, and you're right, I didn't articulate it well. I'm not advocating ignoring the leaderboards (especially for things like chess where they're essential to determining skill). But you don't focus on the leaderboard. It's not the center of your world--just one data point in a complex web of feedback. To take the chess example, sitting there and saying "I'm 1063rd and I want to be better" is barely a start. You have to do a lot of evaluation of your internal strengths and weaknesses as a chess player: do you get bored/hyperaggressive? Do you get too cautious? Do you lose focus after X hours? Then address those with a process in order to move up on the leaderboard. If you define "success" as executing that process, as opposed to winning the game, that's the ticket to both feeling good about yourself regardless of the result AND winning more games over time.