Enough: How Do You Know When You Have Enough?

Enough what?

Money. Time. Energy. Capacity. Space. Connection. Friends. Love. Health. Choice. Responsibility. Stress. Joy. Zest.

The list goes on. And perhaps the list itself is worth paying attention to.

Over the past few weeks on Sutterfaction and here at EvanSutter.com, we've been circling around ideas that increasingly seem connected.

If death asks “What matters?”, and attention asks “Does my life reflect what matters?”, perhaps enough asks a different question:

“When do I stop?”

Modern life is remarkably good at giving us reasons to keep going. More money. More growth. More customers. More experiences. More productivity. More achievement.

There is always another level.

But more doesn't tell us when to stop.

Perhaps enough isn't about having less. Perhaps it's about having a measure—a point where we can recognise that, for now, this is enough.

Enough work. Enough stress. Enough information. Enough ambition. Enough exercise. Enough people. Enough solitude.

And perhaps that measure changes with the season we're in.

What is enough when you're twenty-five and building a career may be very different from what is enough when you're forty-five with a family, a business, and a different set of responsibilities.

So perhaps the question isn't simply:

How much is enough?

But:

Enough for what?

And enough for whom?

This brings me back to attention.

If we're constantly distracted, consuming, achieving and responding, how would we know what enough even feels like? If enough isn't part of our vocabulary, perhaps we simply keep going until something forces us to stop.

Maybe enough is something we calculate.

Maybe it's something we feel.

Maybe it's something we learn.

Or perhaps it's all three.

I'm still thinking about it.

How do you know when you have enough?

This week's podcast

This Field Note is the beginning of the thought, not the conclusion.

On this week's Sutterfaction, I'll sit with the question for longer—exploring enough, ambition, attention, balance, flourishing and the strange difficulty of knowing when to stop.

Listen to Episode 39 later this week.

Want to take the conversation further?

Sometimes a good question is easier to explore with someone else.

The Good Life Session — 90 minutes of focused thinking.