Your standards aren’t what you do on a good day. They’re what survives a bad one.

Your best day demonstrates what is possible, it does not describe how you operate. The real level is whatever survives when you are tired, behind and not in the mood, because that version turns up far more often. People come to know you by the floor rather than the ceiling, and so, eventually, do you.

Watch what you drop first when a day goes badly, because that is where your standard actually sits. Pick one of those things and protect it next time, even in a shrunken form. Raising the floor changes more than raising the ceiling.