How do you asses how well your portfolio is doing?

So I was thinking. I’m a fairly new investor, I began in 2021. I’m finding it difficult to analyze how well I’m actually doing. I’m aware that not even 2 years isn’t a long enough time to judge but something I’ve ran into is this:

So last year I did better than the market. I was down about 8%. In saying that however, I’m in an accumulation phase where I’m continually investing money as I have it. So ya I didn’t do as poorly as the market but that may be because I was often buying stocks at lower prices.

Now if we look at this year (short time frame I know) the s&p is about about 6%. I’m currently lagging that and i’m up 4.3%. So again, am I lagging the market because I’m buying stocks at a more expensive price ?

Essentially my question is this, if I keep adding to my positions how will I know how well I’m really doing? In a bull market will I always lag and in bear market will I always be on top?

How do you analyze your own portfolio if your still accumulating ?

I hope this makes sense.