Define your standard

Before you start: Have you received your Autonomy Architecture Blueprint?

Your results will personalize this entire learning path.

Welcome to Install 3, Define Your Standard, of Learning Path 6: Human First AI Fluency. Today you'll define the standard your work has to meet before you put your name behind it, and save it as page four of your library. It takes one 50-minute session.

Need to catch up? Work through these first.

→ Primer: That wasn’t luck

→ Install 1: The one skill

→ Install 2: Write out how you do it

Last week, I met with the team at Uare.ai, where I'm building my AI guide—a human-first, agentic “coach in your pocket” trained on everything I know to help you elevate your performance whenever you need help at work.

I wanted to bring a storyboard that showed them what I'm building and who it's for. Before I made a single slide, I recorded a voice note on what the storyboard had to be while I was on a walk. It ran 23 minutes.

In it, I said who I'm building it for: "at the center of the bullseye are those who own customer relationships." And then I described the two rings around them.

I also spent a lot of it on how the finished version should feel. "It feels premium. It's timeless. It's philosophical in nature. Simple and clean."

Without context, those descriptions could mean almost anything. So I provided examples: Jack Butcher's Visualize Value, a site called Subject House, and what James Clear built with Atomic Habits and his Atoms app. I was even specific about which version of Visualize Value inspired me most: "not the current iteration, but the version from four or five months ago."

I also named what I didn't want: "without getting too wordy or too busy on slides."

Practically none of my voice note was about how to make the slides.

In this engagement, the slides didn’t have to be perfect or beautiful. The content mattered more so that we could have a productive conversation and brainstorming session. It was all about what the finished storyboard needed to communicate.

That's a standard.

A standard is something you can control, and it gives you realistic optimism. This is true for just about anything in your role—cold outreach, a presentation, running a demo, giving a speech, building a business case—you name it.

On the opposite side are expectations.

An expectation is out of your control—such as how a prospect will react to your POV pitch deck or what kind of response you’ll get from a follow-up email. Lower these, because they give you healthy pessimism and keep you focused on raising your standards as high as possible to prepare for any potential outcome.

Sadly, too many professionals operate in reverse—they have insanely high expectations and very low standards.

A standard has four parts:

Once you’ve defined your standard, test each part. Could someone who has never seen your work read what you wrote for each part and say yes or no?

For example, “Make it premium” fails that test. “Like Visualize Value's site from four or five months ago" passes, because there's something to compare it against.

The work you do this week becomes the standing rules for your AI.

→ Human: 10 minutes, no screen. Open page three and the past work you saved with it. On paper, answer four questions fast.

→ Professional: 20 minutes. Pay “the tax.” Now, turn your notes into your standard inside a document you can save and easily access.

Type out just one or two lines for each part. Write every line so someone else could check it with a yes or no. "Clear" can't be checked. "A CFO could repeat it back after one read" can.

Under What Elite looks like, add one line for what Pro looks like and one for Elite, so you can see the gap. You can do it by hand or by voice. It can be messy, as long as every word is yours.

→ AI: 15 minutes. This time, AI plays the reviewer who has nothing to go on but your standard. Open a new chat in whatever AI you use (or your company allows). Type in or upload your standard, leaving out customer names and anything your company wouldn't want shared. Then paste this prompt:

→ Back to you: 5 minutes. Read the page out loud.

Then check the past work from page three against it, line by line. Does it pass? If your best work fails a line, decide what needs to change: the work or the line. Cross out or remove anything that doesn't sound like you.

Save it in your My Library folder next to pages one, two, and three. That's page four of your library. (Skipped Install 2? Start there. This page builds on how you do it.)

Last week, I grouped my seven principles for writing with an editor's eye into three phases: focus on one reader, simplify and clarify, and read it out loud. This week, I turned them into the standard my book's manuscript has to meet.

I also wrote one for how I should work, and gave it a scoring system so the editing process feels like a fun game.

The manuscript goes back to my publisher on December 11. Here’s my system on the Craft Continuum:

This page will go into the library my AI guide will use. In the next lesson, it becomes the rules my AI guide follows when it edits with me.

Hit reply (or comment below if you're reading on the web) with how you’re progressing so far or what you need help with most right now. I read every reply and comment.

TIME COMMITMENT: 50 minutes, inside your weekly 60-minute block.

Next up: Install 4, Set Up One Project. You’ll load your library into one AI project and run it on a real piece of work due that week.

Stay human, friends.