Compare yourself to yesterday

"Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today." That is rule four of Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, and it is this chamber's entire scoring system.

Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist who answered a question online about the most valuable things everyone should know, and the answer became a book in 2018 that sold millions and started arguments in every direction. People came for the arguments. A lot of them stayed for the rules, which are plainer and warmer than the fights suggest.

Rule two: treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping. He noticed that people fill their dog's prescription faithfully and skip their own. Rule four, above. Rule six: set your house in order before you criticize the world; not because the world doesn't need fixing, but because you'll do it badly from a wrecked room. Rule eight: tell the truth, or at least don't lie, because every lie you tell someone else, you also tell yourself.

I'll say what I say about everyone in this chamber. A key is not an endorsement of the whole person. It is one teaching, sourced and used. Rule four is the teaching, and it's the most generous idea in the book. The only fair comparison is with yesterday's you, because that is the only person on earth who started exactly where you did.

Nineteen days of a log is your proof that the comparison can be made. You have the receipts. Today you read them.

Then there's the other half of the key, which is about the room. One square yard. The desk you've been stacking things on. The corner you step around. Peterson's point is that order in one small place is not about tidiness. It's about proof that you can make the world the way you want it, at least here, and the proof travels.