Vox

Leitura de 9 min

Follow This Principle - Establish Your Baselines

Summary

This episode introduces the principle of establishing baselines as a critical tool for detecting change in one’s life and career. The host explains that to recognize when something has changed, you must first understand the ‘before’ state—your typical patterns and norms across various domains like work hours, health metrics, social activity, and energy levels.

By knowing your baselines, you create a point of reference that allows you to observe deviations, whether intentional or unconscious. This observability is framed as putting action behind your values; if you claim to care about something like family time or personal health, tracking your baseline investment in those areas shows you’re willing to engage with them meaningfully.

The host emphasizes that baselines are personal and not about prescribing specific targets, but about empowerment. He suggests starting simply by identifying a trusted person who can offer external perspective on your operating norms, as others may notice changes you miss. This practice is presented as foundational for gaining the clarity, perspective, and purpose that align with living intentionally.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introducing the principle of detecting change — The episode opens by posing the question of how we detect change in life and career. The host introduces a simple yet profound principle: to recognize change, you must first know what things were like before. The core idea is that we often lack measurements for our ‘before’ state, making it hard to see when we’ve drifted from our baseline.
  • 00:01:49 — Defining ‘Know Your Baselines’ — The central principle is stated: ‘Know your baselines.’ This involves understanding how your daily life typically looks—your operating norms. Examples given include work hours, eating habits, body weight, activity levels with friends, and energy. The host clarifies that baselines are personal and the goal is not to prescribe ideal numbers but to empower deliberate decision-making.
  • 00:04:00 — Baselines for self-awareness and values — The discussion connects baselines to core values and self-awareness. Knowing your baselines for things you care deeply about (like family time or personal health) is an act of putting action behind your values. If you start deviating from your baseline investment in these areas, it’s a signal worth paying attention to, as it shows how your life is actually unfolding versus your stated priorities.
  • 00:06:49 — Practical first step: seeking external insight — The host offers a practical starting point: you don’t need to track a hundred things. Instead, find a trusted person who can observe your day-to-day life and help you become aware of your baselines. Encourages curiosity about others’ observations, as they might see changes you don’t. This external perspective can help establish that initial reference point for what is normal for you.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2025-06-05T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:08:00

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] How can you detect change?

[00:00:16] How can you measure change in your life and in your career?

[00:00:22] In today’s episode, I want to share a very simple principle.

[00:00:26] The episode is going to be fairly short because this principle is so simple, but it is a profound

[00:00:34] idea that I hope you’ll carry with you in your career and in your life.

[00:00:40] The principle is simple in its explanation, but it might not be so simple in its application.

[00:00:52] The idea of detecting change.

[00:00:55] If you were to…

[00:00:56] If you were to imagine how people recognize when something has changed, first, you must

[00:01:03] have an idea of what things are before the change.

[00:01:10] For most kinds of things that we would implement in our software, this is simply a measurement.

[00:01:18] We’re measuring the X to Y, where X is before and Y is after.

[00:01:26] What has changed between them?

[00:01:30] But for most of our lives, we haven’t been measuring things.

[00:01:35] We haven’t been paying attention, necessarily, to the before.

[00:01:40] And so, it’s hard to recognize when something has changed because we don’t know our baseline.

[00:01:49] This is the principle that I want to share with you today.

[00:01:52] Know your baselines.

[00:01:56] Understanding what your baselines are consists of figuring out how your daily life tends to look.

[00:02:06] For example, do you tend to skip your lunch or not?

[00:02:13] Do you tend to work six hours, eight hours, or ten hours?

[00:02:18] Everyone is going to have a different baseline, and you’re not going to hear a specific recommendation.

[00:02:26] recommendation on this podcast for what your baseline should be. We can talk about data and

[00:02:32] we can talk about research that suggests where most people’s baselines tend to be. For example,

[00:02:40] you probably shouldn’t be working more than about 55 hours a week. And for the average person,

[00:02:45] you’re going to get the most out of your work between 35 and 45 hours. But that doesn’t

[00:02:51] necessarily mean that if you’re working 62 hours and you’re listening to this right now that you

[00:02:57] have to change. It just means that the data may not necessarily support your habits. But it’s not

[00:03:04] my choice how long you work. Instead, I want you to have the power, the empowerment to make those

[00:03:14] decisions on purpose. So understanding what your baselines are is a good idea.

[00:03:21] I’m going to talk a little bit about how you can make those decisions on purpose.

[00:03:21] Another example of this is in very simple health metrics. Things like what is your typical body

[00:03:30] weight? If you see your body weight trending upwards from your baseline, perhaps something

[00:03:37] has changed. Perhaps you are not being as active as you once were. And this is something to pay

[00:03:45] attention to. What are your baseline levels of activity with your friends?

[00:03:51] What are your baseline expectations of your energy level? What about your baseline for positivity?

[00:04:00] How would you know if you are, for example, burning out? How would you know if you are

[00:04:07] learning at a rate that you find acceptable for yourself? These baseline measurements,

[00:04:16] these kind of operating norms for our lives,

[00:04:20] can be a critical factor in recognizing when you are doing something,

[00:04:28] when you are changing a behavior without consciously realizing it. These are the

[00:04:35] observations, the observability that you put in place for your own life. It very much helps

[00:04:42] to share these baseline measurements or these baseline expectations with other people. And in

[00:04:49] fact, what other people tell you is that you are not being as active as you once were.

[00:04:50] So I’m going to talk a little bit about how you can make those decisions on purpose.

[00:04:50] People tell you maybe a good starting point. It may actually provide that baseline

[00:04:57] in advance. You may already have somebody telling you that things have changed. It may be tempting

[00:05:05] for you to dismiss that, but I encourage you to do the opposite. Get curious about what others

[00:05:12] are seeing. They might be seeing changes that you don’t see. Why is this so important?

[00:05:19] Because if we want to live in a way that is in line with our own values, in line with our own

[00:05:28] purpose, if we want to gain perspective, that’s the whole point of this show, to help developers

[00:05:35] like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in your careers. If you want to have clarity,

[00:05:41] if you want to have perspective, these baselines, especially for the things that you care most about,

[00:05:49] going back to the idea of values, the things that you care most about, if you truly care

[00:05:55] about them, then understanding what your baselines are shows that you’re willing to do something

[00:06:03] about it. You’re actually putting action behind your values, not just saying that you care about

[00:06:09] them. So if you care, for example, about spending time with family, if you care about having quality

[00:06:15] time with, let’s say you’re a parent with your children or having quality time with your children,

[00:06:19] with your friends, and you start having less and less quality time, you’ve moved away from a

[00:06:27] baseline. You’ve moved away from your own kind of expected investments in those relationships that

[00:06:35] you say are important to you. This is something worth paying attention to. This is how your life

[00:06:43] is shaking out. So I’m encouraging you to adopt this principle.

[00:06:49] And consider, you don’t need to do a hundred of these. You don’t need to necessarily pay

[00:06:54] attention to a hundred of these things. You can start, the easiest way to start is to find

[00:06:59] somebody that you trust, find somebody who can give you insight into your life and they can

[00:07:05] observe how you are operating day to day. Find that person and ask them if they would be willing

[00:07:12] to help you be aware of your baseline. Be aware of that baseline.

[00:07:19] Be aware of those things that matter the most to you and how you’re behaving around them.

[00:07:24] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea. If you enjoyed this episode,

[00:07:28] please leave us a rating and a review on iTunes. Both of those things are incredibly helpful.

[00:07:35] You can find us on Spotify. We also just released this podcast officially as a podcast on YouTube.

[00:07:43] So you should be able to find all of the episodes of Developer Tea are published on YouTube.

[00:07:48] The entire podcast is available on Spotify.

[00:07:49] Go and check it out. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.

Visão de gráfico