The effective method of comparison in personal development

Getting your method of comparison right helps you to set the tone of your life, learn whatever you wish to learn, and do it effectively. When your method of comparison is external, you learn slowly...

To ensure our personal development in the school system, teachers give us exams to enable them to establish by comparison, if we are improving or learning based on facts generated from their evaluation. Many have argued that an examination isn't the best way to test one's knowledge or how much of an improvement one has experienced over a period. For centuries, mentors, teachers and sages have preached against comparing oneself with others. They believe that for you to grow or even know how much you've grown, you should compare yourself to yourself. Our school system has always done the opposite because the best student in the class is given an award, and the teacher admonishes others who could not cling to the award of being best to be like the best student. If this century-long admonition is taken, then every student would get an award, because we would have been awarded in school based on if you were better than the last time you were tested or not.

For you to keep growing in your career and to take your personal development seriously, you must be tested. Being tested or examined and turning out better releases endorphins into your body system while it makes you happy and wants to do more. So, it's a necessity to always confirm and reaffirm if you were better than the last time. More important than this test, is the yardstick being used to compare how much we have turned out better. If the yardstick isn't accurate, the process isn't profitable either. It may even make you worse off than when you weren't tested.

Examination

An examination is a key part of the learning process in personal development because you need to know what you know and what you don't, to put more effort into gaining knowledge in what you don't know and mastering what you know. For anything you want to learn in other to develop yourself, ensure you cater for a system of examination even before you start. One skill where a test is a key part of its learning process is programming skill. The consistent evaluation has been weaved into its learning system. If you check through learning platforms such as Datacamp and Codecademy, you'll see this. In some, you can't progress into the next level of the learning process without solving a particular puzzle or problem.

One may want to ask "what is the difference between the traditional schooling system and the online learning system since both systems ensure you pass a test before going to the next level?" This is a brilliant question. This is the difference - in the traditional schooling system, you're compared with others, while in the online learning system, you're compared with yourself. Testing you isn't the problem here, but what are you measured against. Is it against yourself or others? 

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Gamification

Many inventors and thought leaders in our society have postulated that gamification is the best way to learn for personal development. Elon Musk, a genius inventor and entrepreneur who self-learn how to build Rockets, regarding education and learning, he said, "Generally, you want education to be as close to a good video game as possible." Could this really work? Yes, it can. You find it easy to play a game compared to learning anything in the classroom or online even-though the most part of a game is a test, why? This is because, in a video game, you have the flexibility to make mistakes and correct them yourself with no one judging you. In most games, before you're compared to others, the comparison is usually with yourself. Even in games like Chess.com, you're advised to ensure you do as many personal pieces of training as you can before you play with others. If you're consistently compared with others, and you usually turn out badly in the comparison, your self-esteem is dampened and your drive to learn reduces drastically.

Learning should be an enjoyable process, and it would have been if the method of comparison used is effective. People freely play games filled with tests without panicking, but some people feel very anxious when examination time approaches in school. There's a puzzle somewhere there, and to fix it, we must fix the method of comparison.

Getting your method of comparison right helps you to set the tone of your life, learn whatever you wish to learn, and do it effectively. When your method of comparison is external (i.e you compare yourself with others to know your level of improvement and performance), you learn slowly and also learn things that aren't beneficial to your personal development.

Warren Buffett was once quoted by fs.blog saying, “The big question about how people behave, is whether they’ve got an inner scorecard or an outer scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an inner scorecard.” To buttress his point, Warren Buffet usually asks this follow-up question "Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be the world’s worst lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s greatest lover?"

The reason people feel more comfortable playing video games rather than learning a skill is that gaming is fun and less judgemental in its approach, as the method of comparison is internal (comparing you with yourself). In learning, you're the object of focus, not any other person learning the same thing. You're the one who needs to get better, not any other person, and that's more reason if you need to be evaluated it should be against your last performance, not others.

Duolingo

Duolingo is an online language learning platform presently worth $1.5 billion with over 300 million active students. Duolingo's net worth is far more than most traditional schools in the world, with more active students. Duolingo is a perfect example of using the right comparison method. To learn on Duolingo, you choose the language you want to learn, and you will be advised to take just five minutes of your time to learn daily. While starting out to learn, Duolingo wouldn't give you access to join the leaderboard - where you're compared to others. It only gives you access to the leaderboard after some classes, and you have the choice to join or not. Duolingo is an example of using gamification to learn, as there are consequences for failing your test, but you have the convenience to correct your mistakes with no form of judgement. Little wonder, most of the users have good things to say about them. People learn more when there's no form of judgement to their mistakes and growth rate.

Learning, fun, and comparison

Learning should be fun, and for you to grow your career you will always have to add more skills as you scale higher, and learning new skills involve learning. To improve your learning experience, ensure your comparison method is internal, as you learn the skill, only compare yourself to yourself. When you compare your present progress to your last progress, you make learning more fun without pressure and anxiety of who is ahead of you. You can learn more and better by using the internal comparison method (comparing yourself to yourself).

I would like to know your thoughts on the best comparison method and also answer your question if you have one. So, please drop a comment below, let me know what you think. Please tell a few friends if you feel like it.

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