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Standards
2 min read · 495 words
Standards are specifications for what counts as acceptable. Set above what the situation needs, they produce continuous failure by your own measure — which is demoralising rather than motivating.
Is this you?
Check whatever lands. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Standards are the operator’s specifications for what counts as acceptable output — and the calibration determines whether they serve or impair.
The system runs evaluation against standards continuously. The work that meets the standard is accepted; the work that doesn’t generates the signal that adjustment is required. The mechanism is functional in principle; standards keep the operator producing output worth producing. The mechanism becomes dysfunctional when the standards are miscalibrated — set too high (the Perfectionism entry’s territory), set too low (the operator producing output below what the situation warrants), set against criteria that don’t match what actually matters.
The mistake one direction: standards calibrated above what the situation requires or what the operator can sustain. The operator running impossibly high standards produces continuous failure-by-own-measure, with the cost in motivation and confidence accumulating across years. The standards were supposed to motivate excellence; in this configuration they produce demoralization that prevents adequate operation, let alone excellence. The Perfectionism entry covered the mechanism.
The mistake the other direction: standards calibrated below what the situation requires. The operator producing work that meets only their own low standards, while the actual situation warranted more, produces output that fails operationally even when the operator considers it acceptable. The operator who has reduced their standards to avoid the discomfort of falling short of higher ones often produces a life of underdeveloped capacity and underdelivered output, with the standards adjusted downward to match.
From the chair: calibrate standards to the situation and the operator’s current capacity. The honest reading of what the work actually requires, what the operator can sustainably produce, what level of effort is warranted given other priorities. The calibrated standard is what the work needs, met without the operator burning out. The miscalibrated standard is either what produces dysfunction by being too high, or what produces inadequate output by being too low.
The other application: notice when standards are inherited rather than chosen. The operator running standards installed by parents, teachers, cultural messaging, or earlier versions of themselves may be running standards that don’t match their current values or current situation. The standards being met may not be the ones the operator would have chosen if choosing now. The honest examination of whose standards are running often surfaces material the operator can update — keeping the standards they actually endorse, releasing the ones inherited that no longer serve.
The other discipline: standards in different domains can be different. The operator who runs identical standards across all domains often misallocates effort. Some domains warrant high standards because the work matters and the cost of substandard output is significant; some warrant lower standards because the work is incidental and high effort there displaces the high effort warranted elsewhere. The accurate calibration: high standards where the operator’s life requires them, lower standards where it doesn’t, with the matching producing better overall use of capacity than uniform application.
Calibrated to the situation, not to a fixed maximum
Evaluation against a standard runs continuously: work that meets it is accepted, work that doesn't generates the signal that adjustment is needed. That mechanism is sound in principle — it keeps you producing output worth producing.
It goes wrong through miscalibration. Set above what the situation requires or what you can sustain, it produces continuous failure by your own measure, and the cost accumulates in motivation and confidence across years. The standards were supposed to drive excellence; in that configuration they produce demoralisation that prevents even adequate operation.
The other direction exists too and gets less attention: standards below what the situation warrants, producing work that doesn't do its job. Both are failures of calibration rather than of character, and both are usually invisible to the person running them.
There's a third version worth watching for — standards calibrated against criteria that don't match what actually matters. Meeting a precise bar that nobody needed is its own waste, and it's especially common in people who've carried one domain's standards into another where they don't apply.
Set the bar per task, in advance
The fix isn't lowering standards across the board. It's deciding what each specific thing has to do.
Real questions
How do I know if my standards are too high?
Look at what they produce rather than at how they feel. Standards calibrated well produce finished work you'll stand behind. Standards set above what the situation needs produce continuous failure by your own measure, unfinished projects, exhaustion over work others consider unremarkable, and a slow drain on motivation. If you've never once finished something and thought it was good, that's a measurement problem rather than evidence about the work.
Isn't lowering my standards just accepting worse work?
It would be, which is why the move is calibration rather than lowering. Lowering means accepting worse across the board. Calibrating means matching effort to what each thing actually requires — which usually frees up substantial capacity for the few pieces that genuinely deserve everything. Most people apply the same maximum to a memo and to the work of their life, and the memo is where the time goes.
How do I decide what good enough is?
Decide it in advance, per task, against what the thing has to do and for whom. An internal email needs to be understood once; a contract needs to survive a hostile reading; a first draft only needs to exist so it can be edited. Written down beforehand, good enough becomes a checkable point rather than a feeling — which matters, because waiting for your system to report done means waiting on a bar set unreachably high.
Why do I feel bad about work other people praise?
Because you're measuring against your own specification and they're measuring against the requirement, and yours is set higher. Praise therefore bounces: it's answering a question you weren't asking. It's worth noticing that their assessment is the one calibrated to what the work had to do — which doesn't make yours wrong about the details, but does make it a poor guide to whether the thing succeeded.
Can standards be too low?
Yes, and it gets far less attention because it's less socially visible. Work that doesn't do its job has real costs — to the people relying on it and to your own competence, which only builds through repetitions done properly. The useful frame is the same in both directions: the question is never high or low in the abstract, it's whether the bar matches what this particular thing needs to accomplish.
Where did my standards come from?
Mostly absorbed rather than chosen — from family, from early work environments, from a field with its own norms. Which is why people frequently carry one domain's standards into another where they don't apply, and then can't understand why everything takes so long. Worth auditing once: a bar inherited from somewhere specific isn't a statement about quality, it's a setting, and settings can be adjusted.