¶ Understanding the Baseline Principle
How can you detect change? How can you measure change in your life and in your career? In today's episode, I want to share a very simple principle. The episode is going to be fairly short, because this principle is so simple. But it is a profound idea that I hope you'll carry with you in your career and in your life. The principle is simple in its explanation, but it might not be so simple in its application.
The idea of detecting change, if you were to imagine how people recognize when something has changed, First you must have an idea what things are before the change. kinds of things that we would implement in our software. This is simply a measurement. We're measuring the X to Y, where X is before and Y is after X. What has changed between them? But for most of our lives we haven't been measuring things.
We haven't been paying attention necessarily to the before. And so it's hard to recognize when something has changed because we don't know our baseline. This is the principle that I want to share with you today. Know your baseline.
¶ Identifying Your Personal Baselines
Understanding what your baselines are consists of figuring out how your daily life tends to look. For example, do you tend to skip your lunch or not? Do you tend to work six hours, eight hours, or ten hours? Everyone is going to have a different bass line and you're not going to hear a specific uh, you know, recommendation on this podcast for what your baseline should be. We can talk about data and we can talk about research that suggests where most people's baselines tend to be.
For example, uh, you probably shouldn't be working more than about 55 hours a week. And for the average person, you're going to get the most out of your work between 35 and 45 hours. But that doesn't necessarily mean that if you're working 62 hours and you're listening to this right now, that you have to change. It just means that the data may not necessarily support your habits.
But it's not my choice how long you work. Instead, I want you to have the power, the empowerment, to make those decisions on purpose. So understanding what your baselines are is a good idea. Another example of this is in very simple health methods. Things like what is your typical body weight? If you see your body weight trending upwards from your baseline. Perhaps something has changed. Perhaps you are not being as active as you once were. And this is something to pay attention to.
What are your baseline levels of activity with your friends? What are your baseline expectations of your energy level? What about your baseline for positivity? How would you know if you are, for example, burning out? How would you know if you are learning at a rate that you find acceptable for yourself? These baseline measurements. these uh kind of operating norms for our lives can be a critical factor in recognizing when you are doing something
Right? When you are changing a behavior without consciously realizing it, these are the observations, the observability that you put in place for your own life. It very much helps to share these baseline uh measurements or these baseline expectations with other people. And in fact, what other people tell you may be a good starting point. It may actually provide that baseline In advance, you may already have somebody telling you that things have changed.
It may be tempting for you to dismiss that, but I encourage you to do the opposite. Get curious about what others are seeing. They might be seeing changes that you don't see.
¶ Aligning Baselines with Your Values
Why is this so important? Because if we want to live in a way that is in line with our own values, in line with our own purpose, if we want to gain perspective, That's the whole point of this show, to help developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in your careers. If you want to have clarity. If you want to have perspective, these uh baselines, especially for the things that you care most about.
going back to the idea of values, the things that you care most about, if you truly care about them, then understanding what your baselines are. Shows that you're willing to do something about it. You're actually putting action behind your values, not just saying that you care about them. So if you care, for example, about spending time with family, if you care about having quality time with, let's say you're a a parent with your children or having quality time with your friends.
And you start having less and less quality time? You've moved away from a baseline? You've moved away from your own uh kind of expected investments in those relationships that you say are important to you. This is something worth paying attention to. This is how your life is shaking out. So I'm encouraging you to adopt this principle and consider uh you don't need to do a hundred of these. You don't need to necessarily pay attention to a hundred of these things.
Uh you can start. The easiest way to start is to find somebody that you trust, find somebody who uh who can give you insight into your life and and they can observe how you are operating day to day. Find that person and ask them if they would be willing to help you uh be aware of your baseline. Be aware of that uh of those things that matter to you.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer T. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating or uh and a review on iTunes. Both of these things are incredibly You can find us on Spotify. We also just released this podcast officially as Are you going to be able to do that? catalog. Go and check it out. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.