Has competition an engaging or discouraging effect on you?

[磯七ラスミ]

One of my weak spots is to overthink where my workpieces will be located on time. One second reading my stuff is one second people could spend in a wide range of activities. That said, for me, competition is discouraging. Your soul is my soul. I couldn't snatch what we both own.

Besides, I could turn that disadvantage in a plot.

But stop talking about me, I'm ready to read you too.

[FluffyCakeFactory]

Since I feel inferior nearly all the time, competition tends to drag me down even more. Why even put effort in it if everybody else is gonna be better anyway? If I have a good day, I'll put in effort anyway, but if no effect is to be seen in the near future I give up anyway. E.g. when playing a multiplayer game like Rocket League, I'll play like 10 matches and if I can't see improvement I'll label it as "game I always lose" and move on. Still play it with friends, but without expecting any kind of success. Technically I know I'm giving up too early, but it's hard to fight that habit. After all I grew up that way - I never had to put any effort in school for example.
Thus in most cases I try to avoid competition. Just admit I lost before it even started to avoid stress. But yeah, my approach isn't the best lol.

[TheJerminator15]

It's kind of ironic in my case. I'm always feeling inferior but it tends to help me during competitions as it's the only time I tend to push myself. Of course this tends to backfire since 90% of the time I still mess up but it's worth the effort in my opinion. Bascally it encourages me massively but then I mess up so I end up in an even worse default state of mind.

[trooper6]

I don't think anyone is in competition with me and I don't think I'm in competition with anyone else.

Let's step back. I'm an academic and the job market is terrible. There are very few jobs that come up a year, and for each job well over one hundred people will apply. But you know what? When I was in the job market I wasn't really in competition with every other person who specialized in popular culture. Why? Because we are all different people. Each one of us is a unique combination of things. If they hired some other pop culture person, If might be because that person also did Russian stuff. I don't do do Russian stuff so we aren't really in competition. Who knows why search committees picked me over someone else, or them over me. Nothing I can control, so I try not to stress about it.

Now when it comes to games? The idea, "why would they play my game, when they could do something else?" still is related to what I typed above. You can't control other people and everyone has such different desires, that it isn't really competition. So for example, yesterday I spent a lot of time playing Robert Yang's new game Tearoom. Tearoom is a historical bathroom simulator that is super arty and quasi gay pornographic but really political. Is that game in competition with the new Madden football game? Not really. Those are just not even in the same universe. I have personal tastes and I'll do things with my time that match my tastes. If your stuff matches my tastes, then I'll spend my time with your stuff. If it doesn't, then I won't.

Just do your stuff the best you can, work on marketing it...and then let people choose what they want to do with their time. I just don't think of competition as being involved at all.

[sake-bento]

The healthiest outlook is to think of it as competition with yourself. You want to be better tomorrow than you are today. That's really about it.

Comparing yourself to other people can be pretty damaging in any direction, and I don't know if it necessarily produces good results anyway.