Gary Ong | July 28th, 2021

Work more. Fundraise more. Do more. Grow more. We keep asking more from ourselves. We keep asking more from our employees. At some point, we have to ask ourselves, do we need more or do we want more. When do we stop, and when do we have enough.

As a founder, I am prone to workaholism. I don’t work 100 hours a week, but 93 is my average. My employees end up modeling this behavior, and they work hard too. Yet, the irrational part of me keeps wishing they worked harder. You know it’s irrational because it also wishes I was working harder. We set milestones, deliverables, and performance indices to avoid the rat race of tracking hours. We set them so that we know what is enough. Yet, when we hit a milestone, all we do is wish we had hit it sooner. In other words, all we do is wish we had worked harder. If hitting milestones isn’t enough, and working as hard as you can isn’t enough, what’s enough?

Recognizing enough is a state of mind. It is about accepting your limitations and the limitations around you. There is no perfect information. There is no perfect execution. Until you accept the imperfections both inside and outside, there is no metric that can save you from feeling not enough. So, accept reality for what it is, not what it should be. Accept yourself for who you are, not who you should be. Life is enough. You are enough.