Idempotent tempo

As those LinkedInfluencers may originally preach, work "expecting nothing in return, when no one's looking, because the best investment you can make is in yourself."

I agree; trust in the law of equivalent exchange, as for the sacrifice of time and future liberty, one briefly obtains brilliance. Spend your brilliance in the shadows, and, only over long horizon, fruitful returns await.

You still ask "what differentiates/separates/gaps you vs. them?"

Appetite, or bar at which you are satisfied. Notice that you knew the answer or some invariant, yet you didn't guess what I was going to say, because you're reading thoughts instead of thinking them.

The question is really "what differentiates you vs. you?" Maybe non-trivially, the answer is not nothing, because, implicitly, the latter "you" is the projection of you representing your ideal self. Notice that your ideal self lives in a subspace of equal or fewer dimensions by def of projection.

There are no opponents; stop trying to parse everything into lesser components. Life isn't a competition, nor is it a performance. It's a practice session, where you should never be quite your tempo.

WAKE. UP. And up you'll climb...

to the moon, to Mars, and then back to Room B16 at 6:00 AM.