Seth Godin has a fantastic blog post about “The Curse of Great Expectations.” He describes a trap I feel myself falling into sometimes — that of benchmarking everything. (You’ll note my entries about my sometimes-obsession with measuring my exercise performance.)
The bottom line: the world today is so full of data and overflowing with choices that it seems more difficult to simply be happy in the moment. This is a part of the culture in New York, perhaps because the choices are physical and not just virtual. There’s always a hipper bar, a more successful business, or a more ‘in’ restaurant right around the corner. The Internet, as Seth points out, just adds more channels and choices, with sites like Shopping.com and Froogle lining up your options for easy comparison.
Seth says:
But it stresses us out. A benchmarked service business or product (or even a benchmarked relationship) is always under pressure. It?s hard to be number one, and even harder when the universe we choose to compare our options against is, in fact, the entire universe.