To be early is to be on time. To be "on time" is to be late. To be late is to be forgotten.
When it comes to expressing yourself, your uniqueness is what will make you valuable. Any "me too" factor in it significantly diminishes you.

If you're doing something that your friend or colleague did last year or 6 weeks ago, you are already terribly late. In fact I'd suggest you not even do it at all -- find something that hasn't been done yet in your field, or that has been done, but not in a certain way -- and do that.

You cannot stand out by doing something that has already been done by someone whose profile is similar to yours. The never-ending conversation of our current world -- and even the world that came before it, and the one before that -- demands newness.

This doesn't mean that you have to be this great well of ideas. You can profit greatly by watching other fields outside of yours and see who innovated there. Then, bring that idea to your field. You'll be first, and no one will even know what you did.

This is valuable shit I'm sharing right here. I almost didn't publish this post. Utilize this knowledge before I change my mind and take it down.