by Richard@DecisionSkills » Wed Jan 12, 2022 12:57 pm
I suggest revising how you are framing your standards. Specifically, I would establish a baseline and then try to make incremental improvements.
For example, if I want to learn Spanish, then I set a standard by establishing a baseline of how many new words I learn in a week. Let’s say the first week I learn 10 words. I track that it took 1 hour. This establishes a baseline. It establishes my current standard.
I don’t give a damn what other people can learn, how fast, or time spent. This is MY standard. It’s what I achieved in my list of goals. There is no “perfect”. It’s simply that I now know I can achieve 10 words in 1 hour.
With a baseline, I can now challenge myself to improve. I can try to learn 15 words next week. Or maybe I try to learn 10 words, but in 45 minutes.
Week after week after week, I am using my previous week’s performance to adjust my standard. There is no “perfect” as it is all based on what I have previously achieved.
And when I look back a year later I have achieved two things; -1- I now know several thousand words in Spanish, and (2) I know that I have slowly built up my standard so that each week it takes me only 30 minutes to learn 20 new words.
Sleep is similar. There is no perfect amount of sleep. Instead, establish a baseline. Let’s say one week you are very disciplined and get exactly 8 hours each night. Throughout the week you take zero naps and have plenty of energy. If that is the case, then you make an incremental adjustment to 7 hours and 45 minutes. The next week, 7 hours and 30 minutes.
Eventually you find yourself tired during the day and taking a nap. So you then adjust for the next week to get a bit more sleep.
Week after week it adjusts, but what happens over a period of a year? Eventually you figure out that getting 7.5 hours is generally sufficient for you. This is ON AVERAGE. There is no perfect standard, because you can’t see into the future. As life happens you adjust. As you get a new job, as you age, as you get a mild cold or take a vacation, the amount of sleep you need each week will fluctuate. And that’s okay. It’s life.