Goalpost Drift

Freeze the original standard and check whether it has quietly slid without anyone choosing it.

Three years ago your rule was clear: eating out is for special occasions, groceries are the default. Lately you notice takeout charges four nights a week, and none of them felt like a decision. At no point did you sit down and choose a new standard. The standard moved on its own, one tired Tuesday at a time.

Goalpost Drift is the practice of freezing the original standard and checking whether the current one has quietly slid without anyone choosing it. The cue is a nagging sense that what counts as normal has changed, or the discovery of an old plan that now looks naive. The operation: retrieve the standard as originally written or remembered, in its original numbers or words; state the standard you actually operate by today; then ask who decided the change and when. If the answer is nobody and never, you have drift, not adaptation, and the move is to either recommit to the old line or deliberately, explicitly set a new one. What changes is that your standards become chosen again. This is not a mandate to worship old rules; a standard revised consciously for good reasons is legitimate. Drift is only the unchosen kind.