Baseline Busy

What’s your definition of “not doing anything?”

For some people, “I’m not doing anything today” means that they’re literally doing nothing but filling the time. Maybe watching some TV or reading, puttering about their home, whatever. For other people, “I’m not doing anything,” means that they have five different chores, six emails to send, two errands to run, and they’re going to get dinner out – but since all of those things are normal for them on a Thursday afternoon, they think of it as not doing anything special.

This is an example of how everyone’s baseline affects how they communicate. People have different baselines for all sorts of things: How busy they are, how they’re feeling, how work is going, how hunrgy they are.

If you’re going to be interacting with someone a lot, it’s good to get a feel for their baseline. How your employees feel about stress, or your partner feels about hunger, or your children feel about boredom are all baselines you should know.

And you should know your own baseline! Sometimes the world will be difficult to navigate if your baseline is far off from the average in some way, and you don’t know about it. But if you do, the adjustments become much easier.

At least, they do for me. Maybe your baseline is different.