Comparing Yourself At Work? You’re Measuring Two Different Things
Mind · The Reading Room, Vol. 54 · 10 min read · why the comparison feels like arithmetic, and the ninety-second fix for it
Based on the published research of
Thomas K. Kelemen, PhD · Associate Professor of Management, Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University · faculty page · the review
Ten a.m., the product review. The woman two boxes over on the screen gets a question she couldn’t have prepped for, pauses for exactly one second, and says, “Let me think about that and come back to you Thursday.” Nobody blinks. You would have answered in that same second, probably badly, just to fill the silence before someone noticed you hadn’t.
By 10:04 you have built a whole case against yourself. She is calmer. Sharper. Better at this than you will ever be. You did not see her 6:40 a.m. You have never once seen her inbox. What you are comparing is the one hour of her you actually witness against the full, unedited day of yourself you already know, and calling that a fair fight.
The short answer: comparing yourself to the colleague who “has it together” is rarely an accurate comparison. It is her visible hour against your entire day, and the mismatch gets filed as evidence anyway. Social comparison at work runs automatically, and it skews upward, toward whoever currently looks most composed, using her performance as the data while quietly appointing your own interior as the control group.¹ The fix is not deciding you are just as impressive. It is noticing which two things you are actually holding up against each other.
The skim version
- Comparing yourself to a composed colleague usually means comparing her visible hour to your entire day, not equivalent evidence.¹
- Social comparison at work is automatic, and it defaults upward, toward whoever currently looks most put together.²
- Left unchecked, the comparison can turn into a rehearsed thought that replays instead of resolving anything.³
- Comparing upward on its own is not automatically bad. Envy researcher Niels van de Ven has found it splits two ways: sometimes it motivates real self-improvement, sometimes it curdles into something that only hurts.&sup4;
- What none of this settles: which kind you are having in the moment, and that is the one thing worth checking before the comparison runs the rest of your day.
In this article: Why the comparison happens · Is it a fair comparison · When it becomes a loop · The two kinds of envy · Name the unseen half · FAQ
Why do I keep comparing myself to the colleague who has it together?
Because comparing yourself to the people around you is not a personal failing. It is a default setting, and it has a name older than the office itself.
Social psychologist Leon Festinger described it in 1954: in the absence of an objective ruler, people evaluate themselves against other people, and the comparison tends to run upward, toward someone doing slightly better, more often than down.&sup5; Given a choice between comparing yourself to someone visibly struggling or someone visibly composed, most people’s attention goes to the composed one. That is exactly backward if the goal is feeling steady, and exactly on brand for a brain trying to work out what “good” looks like so it can aim for it.
At work, having it together is one of the most visible currencies there is, which makes the composed colleague the easiest yardstick in the room. You are not weak for reaching for her. She is just standing closest.
We are not psychologists. We read the published research and translate it into plain English; the findings below belong to the researchers named, and the plain-English version is ours.
Festinger’s era did not have to account for a laptop camera. Decades ago you would have caught a colleague’s calm on the way to the coffee machine, maybe twice a day, in passing. Now you catch it in a grid, at close range, several times before lunch. The comparison moves in rather than visits.
Is comparing myself to a coworker ever an accurate measure of anything?
Rarely, and not because you are bad at math. It is because the two columns are not measuring the same thing. A 2025 review of social comparison research in organizational settings, led by management professor Thomas K. Kelemen of Texas Tech University with colleague Michael J. Matthews, describes how workplace comparisons are usually built on partial, visible cues: the calm voice on the call, the on-time delivery, the answer that sounded ready.¹ What does not make it into the comparison is everything that produced that one calm minute, because it happened off camera. Off camera does not count as evidence, even though it is most of what actually happened.
Definition
A social comparison is any moment your brain measures you against someone else instead of against a fixed standard. It happens automatically, dozens of times a day, and it is not itself a problem. It becomes one when the comparison is built on mismatched evidence, her visible minute against your whole day, or when it stops being a single observation and starts repeating.
There is a second, quieter layer. Once you have decided she has it together, you notice everything that confirms it and stop noticing what complicates it: the sharp email she sent at midnight, the meeting she rescheduled twice, the version of her that is not on the call. That is not a character flaw either. It is what a brain does once it has picked a verdict. It goes looking for evidence to support the one it already chose, not the truth.
This comparison lands hardest on women who built a career on being the reliable one, the person who double-checks, who catches what others miss. That vigilance is genuinely useful at 10 a.m. At 10:04, aimed inward, it just as easily builds a case against you instead of solving anything real.
So when the comparison lands, the honest question is not am I as good as her. It is am I comparing her whole day, or one visible minute of it, to my whole day? Most of the time, the answer ends the conversation on its own.
If the comparing has been running so long that it stopped feeling like a choice, the Quiet Audit is ten minutes on where it started. Start here.
When does a comparison turn into something you can’t put down?
A comparison crosses into a loop the moment it stops being a single observation and starts playing on repeat.
Noticing that a colleague handled something well is a data point. It registers, it is mildly interesting, it is over in a second. A comparison becomes a loop when it comes back at 1 p.m., then again at the end of the day, restating the same verdict in slightly different words: she’s better, you’re behind, she’s better, you’re behind, without ever arriving anywhere new. That repetition is a close cousin of replaying a conversation at night. Rumination measurably reduces the ability to solve a problem, or even to recognize a workable one when it is already in front of you, precisely because it is not trying to solve anything. It is rehearsing.³
To be fair to the loop, it does not feel like rehearsal from the inside. It feels like due diligence, like you are finally being honest with yourself about where you stand. That is what makes it sticky. A comparison that loops is not thinking. It is a habit wearing thinking’s clothes, and it is a convincing costume.
| Noticing (useful, then over) | Comparing on a loop (doesn’t end) |
|---|---|
| One data point, filed and done | Replayed at 10:04, at 1 p.m., and again tonight |
| Points toward a specific, small next step | Points toward a verdict about your worth |
| “She handled that well.” An observation. | “She has it together and I don’t.” A sentence about you. |
| Leaves room for your own day to still count | Erases your own day while it’s still in progress |
If you cannot tell which column you are in, ask one honest question: is this thought adding new information, or just repeating the last one louder? If it is repeating, it does not need a rebuttal. It needs the next part.
What the research found
The study. Matthews, M. J., & Kelemen, T. K. “To Compare Is Human: A Review of Social Comparison Theory in Organizational Settings.” Journal of Management, 2025. A synthesis of decades of workplace social-comparison research, sorted into pay, performance and social comparisons.¹
The finding. Different types of comparison, pay, performance, relationships, tend to converge on similar outcomes: envy, quiet disengagement, or the urge to leave. The review also found the field has leaned heavily on individual snapshots and has under-measured how comparisons actually get made in the moment.¹
The limitation. A review synthesizes what other studies measured; it does not run a new experiment on your specific workplace. And most underlying studies rely on people accurately reporting their own comparisons after the fact, which memory is not especially good at.
Is this the same thing as imposter syndrome?
Related, not identical. Comparison is the moment-to-moment habit, the 10:04 verdict. Left running long enough, it can calcify into something closer to a settled belief that you are one mistake from being found out, which is its own separate territory.
What research on envy adds here is a genuinely useful distinction. Niels van de Ven, who has spent his career at Tilburg University studying exactly this feeling, found that an upward comparison can produce two different reactions that get lumped together in everyday speech. One, sometimes called benign envy, sharpens focus and motivates the person to close the gap themselves. The other, malicious envy, aims at pulling the other person down instead, and predicts worse outcomes for whoever is feeling it.&sup4; Which one shows up is not fixed. It depends partly on whether the gap feels earned and closeable, or arbitrary and stuck.
That distinction matters more than it looks. The 10:04 version of comparing yourself to a composed colleague is not envy in the pulling-down sense at all. It is closer to a verdict, delivered inward, with no motivating half attached. The useful move is not suppressing the comparison. It is redirecting it toward the version that sharpens rather than the version that just narrates a loss.
How do I stop comparing myself to a coworker who seems better at everything?
Name the unseen half. When the comparison lands, on the call, in the hallway, scrolling something she posted, take ninety seconds and name three specific things from your own day that never made it onto a screen. Not a general “I work hard too.” Specific: the form you found and filled out before anyone else was awake. The reply you drafted twice because the first version would have started something. The thing you caught this morning before it became someone else’s emergency by afternoon.
This is not a highlight reel to compete with hers. Hers was never the issue. The mismatch was. You are restoring the other half of your own evidence, the half that was true the entire time. It just does not show up on a Wednesday call, because nobody’s calendar invite ever reads 7:10 a.m., found the permission slip. Do it once, on paper or in your head, and let the comparison end there.
If ninety seconds feels like too much on a hard day, one sentence still counts: today also included [one true thing]. Keep it somewhere you will actually see again, the notes app, a sticky note in the drawer you open every morning, so the next 10:04 has something to argue with besides your assumptions.
Who else has measured this
Leon Festinger (1919–1989), Stanford University. His 1954 paper named social comparison as a distinct psychological process and argued the comparison runs upward by default, the foundation every study since has built on. Human Relations, 1954 · Wikipedia · Britannica — in memoriam
Niels van de Ven, PhD, Full Professor of Marketing, Tilburg University. Studies envy and upward comparison specifically, and has found the feeling splits into a kind that motivates and a kind that only hurts. faculty page · Google Scholar · ResearchGate · LinkedIn
Dr. Julie Smith, clinical psychologist and author of Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? Writes about self-worth measured against other people’s visible performance instead of your own values, and why the second kind holds its shape better over a bad week.&sup6; Official site · Amazon author page · LinkedIn · Instagram · TikTok · X
Frequently asked questions
Is comparing myself to coworkers a sign of low self-esteem?
Not on its own. Social comparison is something everyone’s brain does automatically, all day, mostly without being asked. It is worth attention only when it stops being a passing observation and turns into a fixed verdict you carry into the next meeting.
Why does this feel worse at work than anywhere else?
Because work is built to make performance visible and to reward the appearance of having it together, so the upward comparisons arrive constantly, and almost none of them can be checked against what is actually true for the other person.
Does everyone secretly feel this way about someone at their job?
Most people do, about someone. The composed colleague is a role a lot of people get cast in for somebody else at some point, often without knowing it. What differs is not the inner experience. It is who is visible, and when.
What if the comparison keeps coming back no matter what I do?
You likely cannot switch it off; it is automatic, not a choice. What you can do is shorten it: notice it, name your own unseen half, and let it end there instead of relitigating it at 4 p.m. and again tonight.
Should I just stop watching other people entirely?
No. Noticing what someone else does well is genuinely useful, sometimes worth learning from. The goal is not to stop seeing her. It is to stop letting one visible hour of her stand in for an entire verdict on you.
The comparison arrives shaped like arithmetic, which is exactly what makes it hard to argue with. It is still a thought, and it helps to be able to spot when your mind hands you a claim dressed as a measurement.
If you want the next quiet step
There is a short, private audit that names what you are actually carrying underneath a day that looks fine from a distance, no comparison chart required. And if this same habit follows you past the office and into the night, the version that replays at 3 a.m. runs on the same loop.
The woman two boxes over has an unseen half too. You just do not have to compete with either one of you.
Measuring yourself against other people is one habit. Refusing to let a calm stretch stay calm is another, and we looked at why the good weeks can feel the most uneasy.
About the researcher
Thomas K. Kelemen is Associate Professor of Management at the Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University. His research covers organizational behavior and how comparison, pay and performance shape people’s experience of work. “To Compare Is Human: A Review of Social Comparison Theory in Organizational Settings” (2025), written with Michael J. Matthews, is the foundation of this article. Texas Tech University faculty page · Google Scholar · LinkedIn
On the researcher: Thomas K. Kelemen’s PhD is in management and organizational behavior, not clinical psychology; his review synthesizes workplace research, not therapy guidance.
Disclosure
This article is informational and is not medical or psychiatric advice.
We are not psychologists. We read the published work and translate it into plain English.
Blue Leaf Journal has no affiliation with, and no endorsement from, Thomas K. Kelemen, Michael J. Matthews, Texas Tech University, Niels van de Ven, Tilburg University, Julie Smith, or the estate of Leon Festinger.
No commercial relationship exists with any person, institution, book or method mentioned here.
Every quotation and figure above was checked against the primary source on 3 September 2026. Corrections: the comment field below this article reaches the editor. We amend errors in place and note the change and its date here.
References
1. Matthews, M. J., & Kelemen, T. K. “To Compare Is Human: A Review of Social Comparison Theory in Organizational Settings.” Journal of Management, 2025. journals.sagepub.com
2. Festinger, L. “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes.” Human Relations, 1954, 7(2):117–140. journals.sagepub.com
3. Rumination, mood and social problem-solving in major depression. PubMed. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
4. van de Ven, N., Zeelenberg, M., & Pieters, R. “Why Envy Outperforms Admiration.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2011, 37(6):784–795. journals.sagepub.com
5. Festinger, L. (1954), cited above.
6. Smith, J. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? HarperCollins, 2022. goodreads.com
Written by Nora Whitfield for Blue Leaf Journal. Updated: September 3, 2026.
