Keep your own scoreboard. The public one counts things you don’t even care about.

STILLNESS

WHAT THIS MEANS

Public measures are built for comparison rather than for you: likes, ranks, titles, numbers that are easy to collect across a lot of people at once. They will cheerfully tell you where you stand in contests you never entered. Meanwhile what you actually want, getting steadier, being someone people can count on, finishing what you start, goes uncounted because it is hard to display.

Make a short private list of what you want to be true in a year, then check it monthly. Three or four items in your own words. When a public number moves, you will have something to hold it against.

A QUESTION TO SIT WITH

Off the public scoreboard, what would you still count as winning?

MORE IN SOLITUDE & SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Free, with nothing to buy inside it.