How I Accidentally Sucked All the Joy Out of Making Stuff
Last Tuesday, I stared at a blank Procreate canvas for 43 minutes. Not because I was meditating on infinite possibilities, but because I’d just watched a 19-year-old on Instagram paint a photorealistic owl in 90 seconds with a stylus she probably sharpens on her own cheekbones. My first thought: Why bother? My second thought: I should just sell my iPad and buy a very sad sandwich.
That’s when I realized comparison isn’t just a bad habit. It’s a creative guillotine. It doesn’t whisper “you could be better.” It shouts “you’re already irrelevant” while you’re still holding the pencil. And the worst part? Nobody talks about how fast it works. Not years. Not months. Minutes. You can go from “I have a fun idea” to “I am a talentless garbage fire” faster than your phone can load another person’s highlight reel.
So let’s talk about why comparison destroys creative joy faster than anything else—and what to do when your brain turns into a scoreboard you never asked to play on.
The Trap Looks Like Ambition (But Smells Like Despair)
Here’s the trick comparison plays on you: it disguises itself as motivation. You follow artists, writers, photographers, people who make sourdough that looks like stained glass. You tell yourself it’s “inspiration.” You’re just “studying the greats.” But then you notice your jaw is tight. Your chest feels like someone parked a Prius on it. You haven’t made anything in three weeks because everything you start already feels like a failure before it exists.
That’s not ambition. Ambition says “I want to grow.” Comparison says “I want to be them, right now, without doing the embarrassing messy middle part.” Ambition makes you curious. Comparison makes you tired. If your “inspiration” folder makes you feel worse every time you open it, that’s not a mood board. That’s a digital folder of reasons you’ve already lost.
And creative joy? It can’t survive in a room where everything you make gets immediately held up against someone else’s finished product. Joy needs a little ignorance. A little delusion. A little “I have no idea if this is good and I don’t care yet.” Comparison yanks that away instantly.
The Algorithm Is a Joy-Eating Monster (And You’re Feeding It)
Social media didn’t invent comparison. Humans have been side-eyeing each other’s cave paintings since the Paleolithic. But what social media did was weaponize it. It turned comparison into a constant, low-grade fever. You can’t just see one person’s work and move on. You see a curated feed of everyone’s best work, all day, edited to look effortless, posted at exactly the right time to make you feel like a slow-motion disaster.
The algorithm knows this. It knows that envy increases engagement. It serves you the 25-year-old who just sold her screenplay. The ceramicist whose mugs look like they were thrown by a calm forest spirit. The guy who wrote a novel in his car during lunch breaks. And your brain—your poor, exhausted, well-meaning brain—turns all of that into evidence. Evidence that you’re behind. Evidence that your pace is wrong. Evidence that everyone else got a secret manual you didn’t.
Here’s what the algorithm doesn’t show you: that screenwriter’s 47 deleted drafts. The ceramicist’s garage full of lopsided bowls that weep glaze. The novelist’s decade of not writing because he was scared. It only shows the shiny end result, and your brain fills in the blank with “they’re just more talented.” Which is the fastest way to talk yourself out of ever making anything again.
Comparison Moves at the Speed of a Panic Attack
Most things that kill creativity work slowly. Burnout takes months. Creative block can creep in over weeks. But comparison? It’s instant. You see one post, one photo, one perfectly-lit video of someone’s “morning routine” that somehow includes painting a mural and baking croissants before 7 a.m., and your entire sense of creative self-worth can collapse like a cheap tent in a windstorm.
I’ve timed it. I can go from “I’m excited to write today” to “I should delete my entire website and become a person who just quietly collects rocks” in under 90 seconds. The trigger can be something absurdly small. A font choice. Someone’s clean desk. A caption that says “just a little something I threw together” under a project that clearly required a team of twelve and a small grant.
That speed is what makes it so dangerous. You don’t have time to reason with yourself. The emotional hijacking happens before the rational part of your brain can even clear its throat. And once you’re in that state, making anything feels physically impossible. Your hands work, but your spirit has already clocked out and is Googling “jobs that require no self-expression.”
The “Only One Winner” Lie
Deep underneath all this comparison is a belief so old and stupid it should have a museum exhibit: the idea that creativity is a zero-sum game. That if someone else succeeds, your chances shrink. That there’s a finite amount of attention, approval, book deals, gallery spots, or nice comments from strangers. So every time you see someone doing well, your subconscious does a grim little calculation and concludes you’re now slightly more doomed.
This is nonsense. It’s also incredibly hard to unlearn because we were raised on a diet of competition. Grades, rankings, “best in show.” But creativity doesn’t work like a pie. Someone else’s success doesn’t take a slice away from yours. Actually, it often expands the whole thing. When a writer you admire publishes a great book, more people read. When a painter gets a show, more people look at art. The audience grows. The appetite grows. But comparison whispers the opposite, and if you listen long enough, you start hoarding your ideas like a dragon who’s also deeply depressed.
GaryVee once said something that stuck with me, despite his aggressive enthusiasm: “You’re comparing your behind-the-scenes to everyone else’s highlight reel.” It’s true, but I’d take it further. You’re comparing your messy, unfinished, honest process to a finished product that has been filtered, edited, captioned, and posted at a strategic time by someone who might also be crying in their car right now. You just don’t get to see that part.
What Comparison Actually Steals (Besides Your Sanity)
It steals your voice. That’s the biggest loss. When you’re constantly measuring yourself against others, you stop making what you actually want to make. You start making what you think will get the same response. You chase aesthetics, metrics, vibes. You write like someone else. You paint like someone else. You post like someone else. And then one day you look at your own work and feel nothing, because it’s not yours anymore. It’s a collage of other people’s approval.
It also steals time. The hours spent scrolling, spiraling, feeling unworthy—that’s time you could have spent making something terrible but true. And terrible-but-true is always better than polished-but-borrowed. Always. Joyce Carol Oates said, “The great enemy of creativity is the pram of self-consciousness.” Comparison is the engine of self-consciousness. It makes you watch yourself from the outside, judging every brushstroke before it lands.
And joy? Forget it. Joy requires presence. Comparison yanks you out of the moment and into a hypothetical competition you never agreed to join. You can’t feel playful when you’re mentally calculating someone else’s follower count.
Things That Actually Help (That Aren’t Just “Stop Comparing”)
I hate advice that says “just stop comparing yourself.” Oh, brilliant. Thank you. I’ll simply rewire my entire limbic system by lunch. What’s more useful is building tiny practices that make comparison harder to sustain.
1. Create one ugly thing on purpose every week. Call it “intentional garbage.” Write a terrible poem. Draw a face that looks like a melted candle. Record a song that makes your cat leave the room. The goal isn’t quality. The goal is to remind your brain that making things is allowed to be stupid and fun and pointless. Comparison thrives on seriousness. Humor starves it.
2. Curate your feed like you’re on a strict emotional diet. Unfollow anyone who consistently makes you feel inadequate. Not because they’re bad. Because your mental health matters more than their content. Follow people who share process, mistakes, half-finished things. Follow people who make you think “oh, me too” instead of “oh, I could never.”
3. Keep a “proof of life” folder. Screenshot nice comments. Save emails from people who liked something you made. Take photos of work you’re proud of. When the comparison spiral starts, open that folder. It’s not about ego. It’s about evidence that your work has value outside the algorithm’s opinion.
4. Set a timer for 20 minutes and make something without looking at a reference. No Pinterest. No Instagram. No “inspiration.” Just you and whatever comes out. It will probably be bad. That’s the point. You’re rebuilding the muscle of trusting your own instincts instead of outsourcing them to someone else’s grid.
These aren’t magic fixes. Some days comparison will still body-slam you before breakfast. But over time, these practices build a little fence around your creative joy. A fence with gaps, sure. But enough to keep out the loudest, meanest voices.
Making Peace with Your Own Mediocre Tuesday
Here’s a radical idea: what if your work doesn’t have to be better than anyone else’s? What if it just has to be yours? I know that sounds like a pillow embroidery, but stick with me. The most interesting artists, writers, and creators I’ve ever met are not the ones with the most technical skill. They’re the ones who are unmistakably themselves. Their work has fingerprints. It has weirdness. It has choices that make you think “I wouldn’t have done that, and that’s exactly why it’s good.”
Comparison wants you to be interchangeable. A smoother version of what already exists. But the whole point of making things is to add something that only you could add. Your specific brand of messy. Your particular obsessions. Your weird color choices. Your sense of humor that maybe only four people get. That’s the stuff that lasts. That’s the stuff that builds a body of work you can stand behind without flinching.
I’m not saying I’ve mastered this. Last week I almost deleted this entire blog because someone else had a nicer font. A font. But I’m getting better at catching it. At saying “oh, there’s that feeling again” instead of “I guess I’m a fraud and should live in the woods.” That’s progress. Not fast progress. Not Instagrammable progress. But real.
The Joy Is in the Doing (I Know, I Know, But Hear Me Out)
It’s a cliché because it’s true: the reason we started making things in the first place was rarely to impress strangers. It was because it felt good. Because it was fun to build a story, smear paint, capture a moment, bake something that smelled like butter and hope. Somewhere along the way, we handed that joy over to an imaginary panel of judges who live in our phones. We can take it back. Not all at once. But inch by inch, choice by choice.
Next time you feel the comparison spiral starting, ask yourself: What would I make if no one was watching? If there were no likes, no metrics, no “similar accounts” suggestions? Then go make that. Even for ten minutes. Even badly. Especially badly. That’s where the joy lives. Not in being the best. In being the only you in the room.
And if you need to mute the 19-year-old owl painter for a while, I support you. She’ll be fine. She’s probably off sharpening her cheekbones anyway.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does comparison feel so much worse for creative people?
Because creative work is personal. It’s not a spreadsheet. It’s something you made from scratch, out of your own brain, and when you compare it to someone else’s, it feels like a direct evaluation of your worth, not just your output. That’s why it stings so much more than, say, comparing your commute time to a coworker’s. The stakes feel existential.
How do I look at other people’s work without feeling terrible?
Try shifting from “comparison mode” to “curiosity mode.” Instead of asking “is this better than mine?” ask “what can I learn from this?” or “what’s one choice they made that I find interesting?” Treat it like a museum visit, not a competition. And if that doesn’t work, limit your exposure. Seriously. Protect your peace.
Is it normal to feel like giving up entirely after seeing someone else’s success?
Completely normal. It’s also a lie your brain is telling you. The feeling is real, but the conclusion—that you should quit—is not. Give yourself a break. Step away. Do something unrelated to creating. The feeling will pass, and you’ll come back with a clearer head. Probably still a little bruised, but still capable of making things that matter.
Can comparison ever be useful?
In very small doses, and only if it stays analytical. Seeing how someone solved a technical problem or structured a story can be educational. But the moment it turns into “I’ll never be that good,” it’s no longer useful. The line is thin, and most of us cross it without noticing. Best to treat comparison like a spice: a tiny pinch, rarely, and only when the dish really needs it.
