You can change your own standards

Some things you say with real confidence at the time.

Keep the email short and to the point. Lead with the conclusion, then explain. We are not taking on that kind of client again. These are not grand principles. They are positions you arrived at after a few rounds with the work.

A while later, you may be the first to say it differently. The note that needed a gentler explanation gets one. The client you had decided to walk away from says one thing that changes your mind. This does not mean you forgot what you said. It means the place you were looking from has moved.

A standard belongs to the person you were then

The way you work rarely comes from nowhere.

Leading with the conclusion may be the result of an opening so vague that the whole thing had to be redone. Refusing a certain kind of job may trace back to a month when you had no slack at all, or to one bad experience. Behind most standards is a specific reason and a specific place you were standing.

In a letter we wrote, we described bias as the position a person sees the world from. Positions move. You change jobs, move cities, meet people, and set other things down. When the position moves, the standards and judgments that grew out of it move too. That is ordinary, not a failure.

Changing your mind is not a contradiction

Some people resist revising a standard because they do not want to look inconsistent.

But staying consistent does not mean making the same choice every time. You can understand why you thought what you thought and still decide differently now. There is no contradiction in holding both. What is worth protecting is the reason, so it does not get lost in the change.

A conclusion without its reason stops being useful

Imagine finding a line you wrote long ago: do not take on this kind of work.

On its own, it leaves you two options: follow it blindly or throw it out. You do not know where it came from, so you cannot tell whether it still applies. Put a second line next to it — two jobs in a row turned into endless revisions — and you can judge for yourself whether the conditions are the same.

The most useful part of a record is often not the conclusion but the reason behind it. A reason lets a judgment be examined again, and it lets the judgment be put back if it still holds.

The change only shows when the records sit together

We once put it this way: taken together, our personal journals form the history of civilization.

That sounds distant, but it starts somewhere small. Every journal carries the position of the person who kept it. One person writes down a decision; another remembers what the street looked like that day. Brought together, they fill gaps and contradict each other.

If a record keeps only the final answer and erases the hesitation, the revisions, and the regrets along the way, then the people who come later — including your own future self — cannot see how a judgment took shape. What survives is not a list of standards but standards that were thought through again and again.

What we hope to keep

This is one reason we are building Xpod: a place for the things you choose to keep. LinX works alongside you on the thing in front of you; Xpod holds what you decide to leave behind. We want a record to keep the reason of the moment and still have room for what comes later.

Standards can change. Keep the reason with them, and your future self has something to work from.