Raise the Bar

I tend to freak out and forget everything I learned by the time I am writing an exam. I do less well than I ought to. Perhaps I have always been this way. Well, it’s time to stop.

Often when people do call on me they have to wait a bit before they get my attention. Same thing with work tasks. I will be judicious in the application of this, but I’m upping the “Do it now” ante for a lot of things that come from other people.

Not terribly long ago I created myself the (now deleted) goal “become more of a perfectionist in the right ways.” Sounds like a homonym of “Raise the Bar.” Except this one is much better put!

The question for myself now is, where and how?

To start, I will raise the bar again on self-discipline. Foregoing what I prefer to do by choosing to do what I should do in order to produce interesting work and an interesting life.

And I will do fewer things simulaneously by completing things before picking up the next.

I am not self-disciplined enough to have an excellent output through sheer effort for projects that are my own. I need collaboration. And I also hate it that I cannot multi-task or take on more than a small number (not limited; I know I have limits, I just hate that they’re less than I feel I should be able to do) of projects at a time.

My commitment to this goal in the meantime then is that I’m in a course, which is a collaborative effort, and I’m going to work on improving my participation in class, and come to each class prepared, and do my best to avoid my narcoleptic episodes. Each class, and once in a while at a business thing, I seem to fall into 5 minutes of statis, a sudden deep sleep while sitting in my chair at the table. I have always done this, since high school – and I have to find a way to beat this problem.

I wanted to reopen this goal. There are projects I could have been working on in a diligent way for the rescue; I understand why I haven’t, but nothing changes that they could have been done or at least started by now.

I should make more effort at being thorough and really use the time I do it to focus on “deliverables” and double-check if they are finished. And if not, write down what remains before I can really consider it done.

One is the bona fide work day and self-discipline goals I adopted. But there’s more than one way to improve my work/output. It’s not just doing it in time, but doing it well.

I surf on a lot of osmosis and luck and the procrastination payoff. I can put things off to the next-to-last minute and pull acceptable outcomes out of my ass. See, procrastination rewards! But then I think: if I started earlier, maybe v1.0 (of which often enough there is only v1.0) would be better.

But I was thinking, maybe, despite all I do, get done, etc., with respect to work, projects, social skills, and even writing about them, maybe my quality could increase? Maybe I’m mediocre, just needing a little guidance on how to get good, and maybe I’m good, just needing a little demand in order to be great. On various things.

How can I test and raise the bar?

I was thinking about looking for someone good at the things they do that intersect with the things I do and want to do, and asking them for some honest feedback.