Enough is enough- literally.
From Merriam-Webster Dictionary
enough (pronoun)
: a sufficient number, quantity, or amount
Most of the people I work with don’t really have bosses. They are in charge of their own destiny to a large degree. They determine when and where they work. They determine how much they earn. They make the decision to work as hard as they want to. For the most part.
So why do they work so hard? Why do they check email well into the night? Why do they allow work to intrude (is invade too strong a word?) on their personal lives?
Most commonly, we come up with two answers for this.
They have created some bad habits around starting and ending the work day. They start checking and replying to emails well before the historically accepted 8:00am. And they find themselves checking messages or working on projects well after 5:00 or 6:00pm.
This often starts as something we do to catch up when we feel behind, then turns into the norm. Obviously, this can wreak havoc on personal health, relationships, attention, and focus, and we never get to actually recover from a work day because there is no longer any recovery time.
We want more than enough. We want more money. We want a bigger title. When we’re early in our careers, we tend to want more responsibility and autonomy. With the founders I’ve worked with, they tend to want more security. There is never enough of what we think we want. These desires, left unchecked, are insatiable.
So how can we start finding enough and resting there?
First off, we have to quit moving the goalpost. I’ve known lots of people who will set a financial goal for the year, hit it earlier than expected, and then continue to move the goalpost until it’s unachievable. This totally misses the point of goals.
The second thing we can do is start to create goals around enough. “I have enough money, now I’m going to focus on other things like creative projects.”
Or, “I have a goal of taking 8 weeks of vacation this year.”
Maybe it’s something like, “I want to add two more clients to our roster this year and no more!”
Having goals that act as governors on our “never enough” behavior will keep our unbridled ambition in check, which ensures that we take better care of ourselves and the people around us.
