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You are here: Home / Blog / Resetting baselines

Resetting baselines

Dan Cullum · Oct 26, 2022 ·

Every so often I like to take a look at my baselines and consider whether or not they need a reset.

When I say baselines, I mean quantifiable expectations we set for our growth and self improvement.

A good example are the targets many of us set on fitness trackers. When I first bought an Apple Watch, I started with the default move target of 500 calories. I have periodically reviewed my daily goal, and increased it slowly over time.

Another is the number of focused minutes of Cantonese and Spanish practise that I complete between my weekly lessons. I often find myself the day before a lesson trying to cram in some reading or vocabulary to make the lesson worthwhile. I realised I was setting my expectations too high, and that some consistent daily practise was better than none.

The goal of resetting baselines isn’t to create a laundry list of tasks we need to complete. That’s exhausting, and the opposite of what I’m getting at.

Resetting baselines is about choosing the few things that matter, setting new and high standards for what we expect of ourselves in those few things, and deliberately dropping the rest.

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