Priya had learned to keep notes.
Not because she was organised by nature — she was, but that wasn't the reason. She kept notes because the alternative was a specific kind of madness: the madness of being told you hadn't done something you knew you'd done, in a conversation you remembered clearly, with a person who remembered it differently.
Her manager had a gift for the moving target. Early in the role, the feedback had been about needing more initiative. She'd taken initiative; the feedback shifted to needing more consultation. She'd started consulting more; the feedback became that she wasn't showing enough independence. She had notes from all three rounds. The notes showed a straight line of compliance and a shifting line of requirement.
The effect wasn't frustration exactly — it was something more insidious. The sense that competence was not a destination she could reach, because the destination was not fixed. That she was, permanently, in the process of failing to become something that was constantly being redefined.
What about you?
Have you ever met an expectation precisely — and watched the standard shift so that you still fell short?
She'd done what was asked. The moment she'd done it, the thing that was asked had changed. She'd been running toward a finish line that moved every time she got close.
She brought the notes to a meeting. Not aggressively — she'd prepared her tone carefully. She laid them out: the March feedback, the June feedback, the September feedback. She named what she observed: that each round of guidance had appeared to contradict the previous. She asked, with genuine curiosity: *How should I be holding these together?*
Her manager's response was interesting. Not defensive — something more surprised. As if the three points on the timeline, laid out side by side, looked different to her too.
They talked for an hour. Not everything was resolved. But the target — for the first time in two years — stopped moving. They arrived at something written, specific, agreed upon. She walked out with a document rather than an impression.
The anxiety had lived in the gap between what was said and what was meant and what was later remembered. The document closed that gap. Not perfectly. But enough.
What about you?
Have you ever found that making an expectation explicit — putting it in writing, stating it clearly — made the expectation itself more stable?