The comparison that keeps you working may still be choosing the wrong work for you.

Rivalry is an efficient engine attached to an unreliable steering wheel. Measuring yourself against a particular person will certainly get you working, since nothing motivates like a near neighbour doing well, and it also quietly imports their goals into your life. You can end up excellent at something you chose only because they chose it first. The energy is real, the direction was borrowed.

Ask whether you would still want the thing if the person you compare yourself with vanished tomorrow. Where the answer is no, spend this week on the work that survives the question.