Standard drift · also called baseline vs goal
how did good enough become barely acceptable
Standard drift is what happens when the target you wrote down stays fixed while the daily minimum you actually accept from yourself keeps eroding underneath it, one small pass unnoticed at a time. Nobody decides all at once to lower the bar. It slips a fraction with every excused day, until the gap between the stated goal and an ordinary Tuesday has quietly become the whole problem.
Nobody fails a resolution by picking a bad goal. They fail because the ordinary Tuesday underneath it got smaller all year, and in December they only remember writing the goal down.
What to do about it
Name the one daily minimum you have let slide the furthest, and hold it for one week before you touch the bigger goal again.
Books that work on this
Each is a 90-day programme. Start with the first — later books assume the work in the earlier ones.
Standards Over GoalsComing soon
Standards Outlive Goals$6.99
The Standard LiftedComing soon
No Wasted Years$6.99
Hard Standards Held$6.99
The Sharpening Year$6.99
The Output Standard$6.99
Standard As Identity$6.99Part of the Elite series.
How people say it
Nobody looks this up by its clinical name. These are the ways it actually gets said.
- I keep setting the same goal every year and never hitting it
- my standards for myself have quietly gotten so much lower
- how did good enough become barely acceptable
- the goal has not changed but I have, and not in a good way
- why do I keep resetting the same target every January
- my baseline effort keeps shrinking and I did not notice until now
- I lowered the bar so slowly I did not feel it happening
Written by Brian Spiker, who has run Spiker Carpet and Tile Care since 2013 — the receipts. More terms in the encyclopedia.