On Potential and Capacity
Having a routine adjusted to 100% of one’s potential is unpropitious.
Allow me to explain…
Computer systems usually have a significant dissociation between user-mode and kernel-mode.
In significantly layman terms, user-mode is an unprivileged state of the CPU, wherein a process is not allowed to do activities that might compromise the health/stability/security of the system. It prevents direct interaction with system peripherals, or memory locations which have not yet been explicitly assigned, etc.
This monumental, managerial task of maintaining each process’ state and monitoring authorisations and accesses, is handled by the kernel. So, in significantly more layman terms, kernel-mode is a privileged state of the CPU, where a process can access everything that is in the capacity of the system.
Since the kernel itself is running on the system, it must take some space within the system’s installed memory. Furthermore, the Operating System itself will take a significant amount of memory and storage within the system’s components. A system installed with 8 GiBs of RAM wouldn’t have all that memory available for launching applications on the operating system. To be really honest, expecting the advertised 8GiBs of performance is irrational.
We can conclude that there’s a difference between the maximum capacity of a machine, and a healthy potential of a functioning system.
Examinations and Benchmarks
I feel there’s a significant difference between conducting an evaluation and conducting a performance benchmark.
Performance benchmarks are handy for analysing machines employed to do a certain task. The fact that many organisations employ humans to do a certain task by analysing their performance benchmarks will come as no surprise. I think that part of the reason this is true is because most evaluative components for humans incline more towards the maximum output that can be generated for a workload within a short span, rather than a wholesome evaluation all inclusive of the same workload but spread across a sufficient time interval.
Most people do not evaluate themselves on the basis of how they perform over an average timeline. Maybe this is because of the numerous times the education system judges us on this absolute metric. It’s like we personally recognise our worth and potential according to the absolute scale, the maximum potential that we can achieve over 3 hours in a closed room. This leads to people judging themselves on not being able to catch up to this high reference potential which is actually a performance benchmark. Doing this is nothing short of self-laceration.
Just like the kernel in a system always reserves some memory space for itself from the total memory pool, humans should factor in their time for leisure and wellbeing from their total available time.
Hustling is important, but there must be something worth hustling for.
Decoupling the idea of submitting to one’s purpose from the idea of submitting to one’s work is an important challenge that everyone must try to overcome.