The finale: 5 practical ways to beat comparison and burnout at work

How to replace toxic workplace comparison with something more sustainable, self-directed and sane

Jun 10, 2025

Turning comparison into something that builds, not breaks you

When I left BigLaw, I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt exhausted.
Not just from the hours, though they were brutal, but from the mental toll of always measuring myself against others. Every win felt empty if someone else had a bigger one. Every compliment was weighed against someone else’s louder praise. I was chasing an illusion of who I thought I should be, based on everyone around me.

In the first two parts of this series, we explored how comparison culture creeps into high-achieving workplaces: first as envy, then as a system baked into the business model, where your self-worth is tied to a corporate scoreboard you didn’t agree to play on. The result? Burnout, anxiety, disconnection. You start running faster just to feel like you’re not falling behind.

But what if the problem isn’t comparison itself, but how we compare?
What if you could channel that ambition into something healthy, something sustaining?

That’s what this final piece is about.
Here are five ways to reframe comparison so it fuels your growth, not your burnout.

1. Make your past self the only benchmark that matters

When I left BigLaw, part of me felt like I’d failed. Like I couldn’t hack it in the long run. It didn’t matter that I was exhausted or that I knew I needed a reset, there was still this nagging sense that stepping away meant I was falling behind.

But slowly, I started noticing things. I was sleeping better. I had the energy to exercise again. I was more present in conversations, less reactive, sharper in meetings. Not because I was trying to outdo anyone, but because I was focused on improving myself.

That was the turning point. I stopped benchmarking my progress by titles or comparison and started asking: Am I becoming clearer in my thinking? Am I a better communicator than I was last year? Am I showing up in my relationships the way I want to?

Psychologists call this “temporal comparison” — measuring against your past self — and it’s surprisingly powerful. Unlike constant social comparison, which fuels insecurity or ego, this kind of reflection fosters steady motivation and self-respect. One study even found that adolescents who focused on temporal comparison reported better self-image and lower stress than those who compared socially.

The idea is simple: when your measure of success is internal, not external, your growth becomes more honest and more sustainable.

2. Turn mistakes into feedback instead of fuel for self-criticism

When you’re in an environment built on comparison, mistakes stop being learning opportunities. They become evidence you’re falling behind. At least, that’s how it felt to me.

I remember missing an issue in a transaction that I should have spotted and staying silent during a negotiation when I should’ve raised a point. The mistake itself wasn’t career-ending, but the internal dialogue was brutal. Someone else at my level would’ve caught that. They wouldn’t have let it slip. It wasn’t just a slip-up. It felt like proof I wasn’t where I should be.

What helped was shifting how I thought about these moments. Instead of asking, “Why didn’t I get that right?”, I started asking, “What does this show me about where I need to sharpen up to get to the next level?” The mistake became a data point, not a judgement.

And more importantly, it gave me something comparison never could: control.
When you use mistakes as feedback, they become part of your personal growth archive. You stop seeing them as evidence of inadequacy and start seeing them as markers of improvement.

This shift didn’t eliminate the sting of getting something wrong. But it stopped me from using each error as a weapon against myself. I could still hold high standards without dragging my confidence through the mud every time I fell short.

Mistakes happen. They always will. The question is whether you treat them as signs you’re not good enough or as signposts for where to grow next.

3. Limit exposure to triggers that hijack your mental scoreboard

Some comparisons aren’t sought out, they’re just part of the environment.

At my old firm, our billable hours were circulated weekly. Everyone’s. You didn’t need to snoop to know who was ahead or behind, it was right there in your inbox. Even if no one commented on it directly, it shaped how people saw themselves and each other. Quiet pressure, built into the system.

Outside of work, the comparison culture just gets flashier. Scroll LinkedIn and you’ll inevitably find the Harvard MBA turned McKinsey consultant turned NYT bestselling author who also just ran a marathon and raised $2 million for a start-up. It’s a perfectly crafted highlight reel, designed to impress and often to induce that quiet internal spiral: What am I even doing with my life?

What you don’t see are the trade-offs. The loneliness, the burnout, the frayed relationships. The bits that get left out of the narrative because they don’t photograph well. The pressure that came before the post.

You don’t have to disconnect entirely. But you do need to engage selectively. I still read the firm updates, but briefly and without letting them dictate how I felt about my week. I still browse social media, but I remind myself: this is a curated feed, not a mirror. I’ve also muted a few accounts that reliably trigger comparison and I check in only at specific times of day.

It’s not about cutting yourself off. It’s about curating what gets in and choosing what deserves your mental energy.

4. Celebrate others without turning their wins into your losses

There was a time when I found it hard to fully enjoy other people’s success. Not because I didn’t think they deserved it — they often did — but because it quietly made me question where I stood. Praise for someone else felt like silence about me. And in a competitive environment, silence could feel like failure.

That changed when I started grounding my sense of progress in personal benchmarks. The more I focused on how I was improving — in skill, in confidence, in how I showed up — the easier it became to celebrate others without attaching it to my own perceived shortcomings.

Now, I make a point of acknowledging people’s wins. A quick note, a genuine compliment, a small gesture of support. Not for show, just because it feels good to recognise something great when you see it.

And I’ve found that I enjoy it. It boosts my mood. It strengthens relationships. It builds trust. It makes collaboration easier and work more human. It also reminded me of something I’d forgotten along the way: success isn’t finite. Someone else doing well doesn’t take anything away from me. If anything, it creates more space for everyone to grow.

Cheering others on doesn’t slow you down. It makes the whole thing lighter.

5. Build an identity that isn’t just based on work performance

One of the reasons comparison used to hit so hard was because work was everything. It wasn’t just a job — it was how I measured my intelligence, my progress, my worth. And when that’s your only lens, even a minor setback can feel like a personal failure. You start to believe that how you’re doing at work is who you are.

That changed for me after I left BigLaw. I started to reconnect with parts of myself that had nothing to do with deals, deadlines or late-night emails. I began training consistently at the gym — something I wrote about in an earlier piece. I picked up tennis again. I travelled more. And slowly, those things stopped feeling like extracurriculars and started feeling like part of who I was becoming.

They gave me a sense of rhythm and self-worth that wasn’t tied to titles or team rankings. They helped me build an identity I actually liked — one that felt fuller, more balanced, more real.

It’s a bit like diversification in finance. When your self-worth is spread across multiple “assets” — your health, your relationships, your interests, your growth — a bad day in one category doesn’t crash the whole portfolio. You might be having a tough week at work, but your fitness is improving, your friendships are strong and you’ve booked a trip that excites you. Net-net, you’re still up.

When you have those anchors, the emotional ups and downs of work don’t throw you around as much. You’ve got something else holding you steady.
A bad week doesn’t undo you. A colleague’s success doesn’t make you question your own. Because your value doesn’t hinge on outperforming anyone else — it’s grounded in a life that’s meaningful on your terms.

When work is just one part of who you are, the comparison game loses its grip.

Closing reflections: Worth beyond the scoreboard

Stepping off the comparison hamster wheel doesn’t mean abandoning ambition. I still care about doing well. I still set goals. And I still get competitive — sometimes in ways that surprise me. The difference now is where I draw my sense of worth.

It no longer comes from being better than someone else. It comes from knowing I’m learning, improving and building a life I actually want to live, not one I’m performing for others.

If you’re in a workplace that feels like a never-ending race, know that you can opt out of the mindset, even if you can’t yet opt out of the system. You can run your own race, define your own goals and build the kind of progress that lasts longer than any performance review.

Comparison isn’t going away. But it doesn’t have to define you. Redirect it. Reframe it. Make it personal.

Because at the end of the day, the most meaningful growth doesn’t happen when you pass someone else. It happens when you realise how far you’ve come and how much better your life feels when you stop trying to win someone else’s game.

If this resonated with you, feel free to subscribe or share.
This is Part 3 of a series on workplace comparison culture. If you missed Part 1 or Part 2, you can find the links below. And if you’ve had your own experiences navigating this dynamic, I’d love to hear from you.

Let’s keep building better careers and better lives on our own terms