Stop chasing more (and more) at work. At some point, we must embrace enough

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Calgary-based leadership coach Mandy Balak asks: When was the last time you exhaled and thought you have done enough, given enough or are enough?

For most of us, that moment of satisfaction or contentment never comes. “We hustle harder, juggle more and tell ourselves, ‘Just one more thing and then I’ll feel caught up. Just one more rewrite or phone call or sale, and then I’ll feel like I’ve nailed it,’” she writes in Chasing Enough.

We believe more will solve everything: More achievements, more hours worked, more accolades and, of course, “more stuff.” It will make us whole. But that never happens. The goal posts keep moving. A voice in your head keeps pushing you along, telling you there’s more to accomplish.

As she struggled building three companies, she experienced this first hand. She thought she had a time management problem. But it was a capacity problem. She compares capacity to a container – a finite space that holds everything you’re carrying. That includes every commitment or responsibility you take, every unresolved issue you haven’t addressed, every suppressed emotion you push down and every boundary violation you tolerate.

“When the container is full, adding one more thing doesn’t make you more productive. It doesn’t prove you’re capable. It makes you overflow. And when you overflow, you lose pieces of yourself you’ve been carrying all along,” she says.

When she hit her breaking point, she realized burnout wasn’t exhaustion but instead self-abandonment. She was so busy listening to everybody else’s needs she had stopped listening to her own. She wasn’t “killing it” in her career; it was killing her.

She urges you to give yourself a permission slip to escape this destructive pattern by banishing the notion of “should.” Guilt, she advises, is the currency of high achievers. “The weight of ‘should’ is blocking your capacity for joy. It’s time to put down that weight,” she writes.

Conduct a “should” audit by watching how frequently it encroaches on your day. The shoulds you carry, she notes, were never yours to begin with. Instead shift from should to choice.

Should keeps you in obligation mode. It saps your energy. Choice involves agency. “The real work is learning to hold that distinction – to catch yourself in the should, question its validity and consciously choose what actually serves you,” she says.

Choosing enough – rather than overflowing your container by accepting all the shoulds – is about claiming the power to determine what matters and protecting it. You must define the boundary between what serves you and what depletes you. She calls it your “enough boundary.”

She suggests asking yourself:

• Enough money looks like…
• Enough achievement feels like…
• Enough time spent working is…
• Enough rest requires…

“The most powerful question might be this: If you were to embrace ‘enough’ today – not someday in the future when everything is perfect – what would shift in how you’re living right now?” she asks. It probably involves a permission slip to be human – to be imperfect and to forgive yourself for not chasing more than enough.

She also advises you to separate your worth from your work. You are more than what you do. Who you are exists beyond what you produce.

“What we need is a healthier relationship with our work and businesses. We need the ability to pour passion into what we build without pouring our entire identity into the outcome. Keep the passion. Shift where you anchor your worth,” she says.

Your identity isn’t fixed. It’s fluid. She notes it can have three dimensions: Your professional identity, which comes with your titles, roles and impact in your work; your personal identity, which is how you are in relationships and interests outside of work; and your core identity, your essence, who you are at your foundation.

Most high achievers have an over-developed professional dimension, often overshadowing the other two dimensions entirely. Indeed, you might even be fuzzy on how to describe the other two dimensions. She says recognizing you are more than your professional identity and determining what parts of yourself you have set aside in blindly chasing more than enough can be the first step to a more integrated, fulfilling life.

Quick hits

• Ghassan Karian, chairman of Ipsos Karian and Box, argues it’s time to give up the LinkedIn humblebrag, in which you say you are “honoured and humbled to be named one of the top 50 people” in an industry nobody has heard about. You’re not humbled if you keep posting about it.  Nor does it work if you claim, as people increasingly do, you “almost didn’t post the news but if it helps one person….” The reality is you posted because you wanted everyone to know. Simply say you are pleased. 
• Time management author Laura Vanderkam suggests giving yourself a “round-trip ticket” next time you are away from work for a vacation. Don’t just focus on preparing to leave and who covers for you in your absence but also plan ahead for your return and how you will assume your duties and responsibilities.
• Ottawa thought leader Shane Parrish says whatever pattern is repeating in your life has one common variable: You.