The Standard Is What Remains When Nobody Is Watching

A few notes on discipline, manners, usefulness, and the increasingly unfashionable business of expecting something from yourself.

THE JOURNAL · CHARACTER

Words by A. Mercer

I have been thinking lately about standards. Not standards in the grand sense. Not manifestos, codes of conduct, or elaborate rules for how a man ought to live.

The smaller ones.

Returning the shopping cart when no one would notice if you didn't. Arriving five minutes early because someone else is waiting. Calling when a text would be easier. Polishing a pair of shoes rather than replacing them. Keeping a promise that has become inconvenient. Putting your phone away when someone is telling you a story you've heard before.

None of these things is particularly impressive. That may be precisely the point.

We live in an age that has become remarkably interested in the appearance of discipline. Morning routines are documented. Workouts are photographed. Books are displayed before they are read. Good deeds occasionally arrive with their own camera crew.

There is nothing terribly wrong with any of this.

But I wonder if, somewhere along the way, we began confusing being seen doing the right things with becoming the sort of person who simply does them.

The two are not the same. And the difference, I suspect, is where character begins.

A Standard Should Cost You Something

It is easy to have principles when they are convenient.

Everyone values punctuality until traffic is heavy.

Everyone believes in keeping their word until a better opportunity appears.

Everyone admires generosity until the bill arrives.

Everyone respects honesty until honesty requires admitting they were wrong.

A standard that disappears the moment it becomes inconvenient isn't much of a standard.

It's a preference and the real test arrives quietly.

You said you would be there. Now you don't particularly feel like going.

You promised the work by Friday. Now Thursday evening has arrived.

You borrowed something and damaged it. No one would know.

You received too much change. The waiter hasn't noticed.

There is rarely music playing during these moments. No audience gathers.

You simply decide what sort of man you are going to be. Then you live with the answer.

KEEP YOUR WORD

There are few qualities I admire more than reliability. Perhaps because it has become surprisingly uncommon.

We have developed an extraordinary collection of ways to avoid saying no.

I'll try.

We'll see.

Let me get back to you.

Should be able to.

Sometimes these are perfectly reasonable answers. Sometimes they are polite disguises for something we already know we aren't going to do.

There is a certain freedom in becoming a man whose yes means yes and whose no means no.

You don't need to promise everything. In fact, promise less.

But once you've given your word, treat it as though it belongs to someone else.

Because, in a sense, it does.

Your reputation is simply the accumulation of other people's experiences with your promises.

Be on Time

Punctuality is one of those virtues that sounds terribly old-fashioned until you're the person waiting.

Being on time says something simple: I understood that your time mattered too.

There will be traffic.

Flights will be delayed.

Children will choose precisely the moment you need to leave the house to begin negotiations with reality.

Life happens. But habitual lateness is rarely a scheduling problem. It is usually a planning problem.

Leave earlier.

Finish sooner.

Build margin into the day.

And when you are unavoidably late, don't manufacture an elaborate defense. Apologize.

Then try not to make the apology necessary next time.

DRESS FOR THE OCCASION

I've written about this before, but it belongs here because dressing appropriately is not fundamentally about clothing.

It is about awareness.

You don't need to be the best-dressed man at the wedding.

You should look like you understood someone was getting married.

You don't need a dinner jacket for every good restaurant.

You should understand when the room asks for more than a T-shirt.

There is a temptation to treat personal style as permission to ignore context.

This is just who I am. Fair enough.

But character occasionally requires remembering that not every occasion is about you.

Make the effort. Usually, people won't consciously notice. That's rather the idea.

Take Care of What You Own

I have always found something admirable about a man maintaining his things.

The shoes get polished.

The watch gets serviced.

The car gets its oil changed before the warning light becomes a negotiation.

The coat is brushed and hung properly.

The good knife is sharpened.

None of this is glamorous. It is stewardship.

We have become very good at acquiring things and rather poor at caring for them.

Maintenance lacks the excitement of purchasing.

There is no box to open.

No photograph to take.

No satisfying confirmation email.

You simply preserve something that already belongs to you. Perhaps that is why it matters.

Care is what happens after novelty disappears.

That applies to considerably more than possessions.

PUT THE PHONE AWAY

This may be one of the simplest standards and, increasingly, one of the most difficult.

Someone is speaking to you. Your phone vibrates. For a fraction of a second, you have a decision to make. The person in front of you—or whatever just happened somewhere else.

We tell ourselves we're only checking. And perhaps we are.

But attention is a remarkably honest currency. Where you spend it reveals what you value.

Put the phone away at dinner.

Leave it in your pocket when someone is telling you something important.

Don't place it face-up between you and another person like a third guest who might become more interesting at any moment.

Being fully present has become sufficiently rare that it now feels almost generous.

Be generous.

Speak Well of People Who Aren't There

There is a particular kind of social currency earned by possessing information about other people.

The embarrassing story.

The private mistake.

The rumor.

The thing you were probably not supposed to know.

Spending that currency can make a conversation considerably more interesting.

It can also make everyone in the conversation wonder what you say about them when they leave.

Discretion is underrated.

So is defending someone who isn't in the room.

You don't need to become humorless.

Friends tease one another. Stories get told.

But there is a line between humor and humiliation.

A man with character should know where it is.

WRITE THE THANK-YOU NOTE

Yes, an actual one.

Paper.

Ink.

Stamp.

I realize this makes me sound approximately 117 years old. I can live with that.

A text saying thanks is perfectly pleasant.

A handwritten note says something slightly different: I stopped what I was doing and gave this a few minutes of my life.

That is what makes small acts of courtesy valuable. They require effort disproportionate to their complexity.

Hold the door.

Send the flowers.

Bring something for the host.

Remember the name.

Write the note.

None will change the world.

They may improve someone's afternoon. That seems sufficient justification.

Know How to Host

A good host understands that hospitality is not about demonstrating how impressive his home is.

It is about making other people comfortable inside it.

Take the coat.

Offer the drink.

Introduce people properly.

Notice the person standing alone.

Keep the conversation moving.

Don't spend half the evening in the kitchen attempting to produce a meal so elaborate that nobody actually sees you.

And perhaps most importantly: Never make a guest feel as though they owe you for your hospitality.

Generosity loses something when it arrives with an invoice.

READ SOMETHING WORTH REMEMBERING

I am increasingly convinced that the quality of what we put into our minds matters as much as the quantity.

We consume an astonishing amount of information. Most of it disappears almost immediately.

Scroll.

Watch.

React.

Forget.

There is value in occasionally encountering an idea slowly.

Read the book.

Underline something.

Disagree with the author.

Write in the margin.

Return to the passage a week later.

A man's mind should contain more than whatever happened to appear in his feed that morning.

You don't need to become an intellectual. You should remain curious. There is a difference.

Keep Yourself Capable

Strength has many forms. Physical competence is one of them. So is knowing how to change a tire. Cook dinner. Tie a proper knot. Speak to a stranger. Comfort a grieving friend. Handle money. Navigate without panicking when your phone loses service. Make a reservation.

Fix something simple. Admit when something isn't simple and call someone who knows more than you.

Capability isn't about pretending you can do everything yourself.

It is about refusing to become unnecessarily helpless.

Be the person who makes a situation slightly easier when he arrives.

That is a useful standard.

SPEND LESS THAN YOU EARN

There is nothing particularly photogenic about financial restraint. Which may explain why we see considerably more content about buying things than not buying them. But freedom often looks rather boring while it is being built.

It looks like not upgrading the car yet.

Not buying something simply because financing made the monthly payment tolerable.

Not allowing your lifestyle to expand every time your income does.

Money is useful because of what it can buy. It is also useful because of what having enough of it allows you to refuse.

A bad opportunity.

A desperate decision.

A job you should have left six months ago.

A purchase designed primarily to impress people who aren't thinking about you anyway.

Quiet financial discipline creates options.

Options are a form of wealth.

Buy Less. Choose Better.

This one has become something of a recurring theme around here. Not because expensive things make a better man.

They don't.

But intentional ownership teaches a useful habit: selection.

You don't need everything you admire.

You don't need to participate in every trend.

You don't need another version of something you already own because this year's version has moved the button three millimeters to the left.

Wait. Choose. Buy something good.

Use it. Maintain it. Let someone else pay the depreciation when appropriate.

And eventually develop a home and wardrobe filled primarily with things you actually like.

There is a remarkable calm that comes from wanting fewer things.

MAKE THE CALL

Some conversations deserve a voice.

Congratulations.

Condolences.

Apologies.

Important news.

Checking on someone who has been having a difficult time. Texting is wonderfully efficient.

Human relationships should not always be.

Call your parents.

Call the old friend you've been meaning to contact.

Call someone after the funeral rather than assuming the flood of messages was enough.

You may occasionally catch someone at an inconvenient moment.

They'll survive.

Admit When You're Wrong

This is considerably easier to recommend than practice.

There is a moment during an argument when you realize the evidence has begun behaving rather inconveniently.

You may, in fact, be wrong. At this point, the ego performs remarkable gymnastics.

Context is introduced. Definitions are revised. Ancient evidence is suddenly admissible.

Anything to avoid four extremely difficult words:

I was wrong. I'm sorry.

Say them.

No footnotes.

No closing argument.

No explanation of how the other person was also wrong in a different and possibly more significant way.

There will be time for nuance later.

Humility does not make confidence weaker.

It makes confidence trustworthy.

MAKE YOUR FAMILY FEEL IMPORTANT

Ambition is admirable.

Work hard. Build something. Take risks. Provide well.

But be careful not to become extraordinarily successful at giving your family everything except yourself. Children are particularly inconvenient in this regard.

They rarely schedule the moments they will remember around your calendar.

The conversation happens while you're trying to answer an email.

The request to play arrives when you're exhausted.

The story takes far longer to tell than the information contained within it would reasonably require.

Listen anyway.

Years have a habit of becoming decades with alarming speed.

There are businesses that can be rebuilt.

Deals that can be replaced.

Emails that can wait until morning.

Some opportunities do not return.

Know the difference.

Leave Things Better Than You Found Them

The room.

The company.

The neighborhood.

The friendship.

The reputation.

The borrowed car with a full tank.

The rental house without a sink full of dishes.

The restaurant table where the chairs are pushed back in.

The young employee who understands more after working with you than before.

Improvement needn't be dramatic.

Sometimes leaving something better means simply refusing to make it worse.

DO DIFFICULT THINGS WITHOUT ANNOUNCING THEM

Discipline becomes considerably more interesting when nobody knows about it.

Wake early without posting the clock.

Exercise without photographing the evidence.

Give money without attaching your name.

Help someone without telling the story later.

Keep the promise nobody would know you broke.

Work on yourself privately.

There is nothing wrong with sharing progress.

Community can create accountability.

But occasionally ask: Would I still do this if nobody ever knew?

The answer is useful information.

Know When Enough Is Enough

Another drink.

Another purchase.

Another argument.

Another hour at work.

Another story about yourself.

Another attempt to prove the point everyone understood twenty minutes ago.

Restraint is not deprivation. It is judgment.

Knowing when to stop is one of those skills that appears simple until you notice how many problems are created by people who don't possess it.

Enjoy good things. Enjoy them enough that you don't need to exhaust them.

BE USEFUL

This may be my favorite.

Be useful.

Not impressive. Not important. Useful.

Carry the heavy end.

Know where the flashlight is.

Make the reservation.

Introduce the two people who should know one another.

Bring jumper cables.

Remember the address.

Help clean up.

Know enough about something that people are glad you are there when it goes wrong.

There is tremendous dignity in usefulness.

And unlike status, usefulness cannot be convincingly faked for very long.

HAVE A STANDARD WHEN NOBODY IS WATCHING

Eventually, every rule on this list arrives here. Because standards are easy when they are public.

The interesting ones are private.

Do you return what you borrowed?

Do you tell the truth when a lie would be easier?

Do you keep the promise after the other person has forgotten you made it?

Do you treat the waiter with the same respect as the person you're trying to impress?

Do you work properly when the boss isn't there?

Do you maintain your principles when breaking them would be profitable?

Do you behave like the man you claim to be when there is absolutely no reward for doing so?

That is the question.

Not whether you always succeed.

You won't. Neither will I.

A standard is not perfection. It is something to return to.

A line you notice when you've crossed it.

An expectation you hold for yourself before demanding it from anyone else.

Perhaps that is what we have misunderstood about standards.

They aren't primarily restrictions.

They are directions.

They answer a quiet question: What sort of man am I trying to become?

And then, in a thousand ordinary moments, they give you an opportunity to answer it.

The Standard

Keep your word.

Be on time.

Dress as though the occasion matters.

Care for what you own.

Give people your attention.

Speak well of those who aren't present.

Write the note.

Welcome people properly.

Read things worth remembering.

Remain capable.

Spend less than you earn.

Buy fewer, better things.

Make the call.

Admit when you're wrong.

Make your family feel important.

Leave things better.

Do difficult things quietly.

Know when enough is enough.

Be useful.

And when nobody is watching—have a standard anyway.

Not because anyone will congratulate you for it. Most of the time, they won't even notice.

But perhaps the purpose of a standard was never to impress the room. Perhaps it was to become the sort of man who no longer needs the room to be watching.

The Standard isn't perfection. It's simply refusing to live carelessly.

— A. Mercer

Keeper of the Standard

FORM & CHARACTER. The Art of Living Well.