Slipping standards

27 Mar, 2026

First, let me explain what I mean when I refer to expectations and standards. Standards are the norm, the default setting, the status quo. Standards should be maintainable.

Expectations are what we believe will happen, or what we believe has the highest chance of happening. A favored hockey team may be expected to win their upcoming game, but to call that a standard isn’t accurate. (I’m looking at you Red Wings.)

Standards can be applied both to ourselves and those around us. We all hold ourselves to a standard. Where one’s standards lie are up to the individual. We choose what we fill our time with, what drives us, and where we spend our lives.

We also hold those around us to a standard. If we work in a leadership position, our holding those around us to a standard should be obvious. But it also applies to who we surround ourselves with, what boundaries we allow others to cross, who we dedicate our time and energy to, and who we put our trust in.

To simply call something a standard doesn’t make it so. If you set a due date for a work project, and your team blows by that date, you must take action. If not, boundaries will continue getting pushed, and standards will drop. The same goes for social relationships. If you have a boundary that gets crossed, you must ensure an action is taken. Setting boundaries is one thing, but enforcing them, or enforcing the standards, is another.

The slipping happens slowly. You normally go to the gym 7 days per week to workout/stretch, but then you decide to skip a Saturday “just this once”. But then skipping Saturday becomes easier; it becomes an option. By doing that a couple of times, skipping Saturday can become normal. It becomes your new standard. You maintain that 6 days a week for a while but then decide it would be nice to take Wednesdays off. Now we’re down to 5 days a week? (I know going to the gym 5 days a week is plenty, just an analogy. Put down the pitchforks!)

This way of thinking can be applied to anything. Writing, schoolwork, and social events. This also applies to how to allow yourself to be treated. Patterns of abuse do not start overnight. They start with one insult going unaddressed, then a push goes unaddressed, which can then morph it into something much worse, and much harder to recover from.

Now, I am not saying we should always push ourselves, and never rest, and panic the next time we want to eat a doughnut for breakfast. It’s okay to let things fall off our plates sometimes. We can’t live our lives in a constant grind mentality like we are wearing a cut out “Nobody cares. Work harder” T-shirt.

Setting realistic standards and managing our expectations for those standards is the key. We all know the parents of those kids growing up. If the kid didn’t get perfect marks in school, the parents swiftly and openly showed disappointment in them. This is called having unrealistic expectations. We get these unrealistic expectations when we set standards that are unable to be maintained but, for some reason, we still expect them to be. We covered this earlier; these are not actually standards, because standards are our normal and should be maintainable.

There is one counter to this point though. Setting higher expectations for yourself can cause you to raise your standards. Then once you fill those new shoes, and hold yourself to that new standard, your expectations of yourself rise as well. But it is very important here still, to manage your expectations.

So, what does this mean? It simply means if you operate only on autopilot, instead of analyzing, setting, and holding standards, they could be slipping. It takes far less mental energy to let a standard slip than to implement a new one. It is much easier to let it slide “just this once.” Before you know it, you wake up and your line will have moved so much, you forget where it was located to begin with.

We know who we are, what is within our ability, and who deserves our time and energy. But we must have the presence of mind and guts to be able to establish and hold our standards.

If we don’t set standards, others will set them for us.