Made by a student who thinks competition can be put to better use.

People love to compete. We do it in almost everything: grades, jobs, salaries, business, and on a bigger scale countries compete over technology, the economy and power. Psychologists call part of this social comparison: we work out how we’re doing by looking at the people around us.

What caught my attention is what happens when someone’s life doesn’t have much of it. The need doesn’t go away. People find it somewhere else, and for a lot of us that place is a competitive game. You grind for a rank, you want to beat the other side, and you come back the next day.

One question stayed with me: what if that same drive went into real life? You’d still get the competition. But at the end of a season you’d also have read more, trained more and kept more of your habits. I couldn’t think of a better trade, so I started building Ascend.

In a league you’re up against other people who are climbing too, and that’s what gets you started. But the one really worth beating is who you were yesterday. Will Durant summed up Aristotle as “We are what we repeatedly do.” Ascend counts the repeating.

It only works if you’re honest with yourself. Logging a workout you didn’t do might win you a league, but it won’t change anything about you. The points are there to push you. The real prize is what changes in you.