Redefining Enough

For as long as I can remember, I’ve measured my life using criteria I didn’t realize I’d chosen. Productivity, usefulness, competence, output. Positive validation for how much I could carry and how smoothly I could carry it began at a young age for me. These were the metrics that signaled worth. They came from family stories, from school, from early bosses, from the culture of high-achieving women in the 90s. I was fully bought in.

It’s only recently that I’ve realized how rarely we stop to examine the systems behind our sense of “enough.” We treat it as something that should be obvious, as if we’re all operating with the same internal scorecard. But most of us are running on unconscious, assumed definitions. We’ve absorbed expectations and outdated narratives about what a good life or a successful career should look like.

A few months ago, I found myself studying my calendar in a way I hadn’t before. Not to optimize it or color-code it or find a new efficiency tool, but simply to notice the story it told. Every empty pocket of time had turned into a placeholder. If there was a spare hour, it was automatically assigned a purpose: catch up, get ahead, follow up. Focus even became a placeholder. My drive to deliver a tangible output has sunken into nearly everything.

This is the kind of thing we don’t call out, but that doesn’t make it without impact. These subtle pressures determine what we say yes to and what we ignore. It influences how our teams interact with us and how accessible we allow ourselves to be. It even impacts how present we are with the people we love.

When “enough” is measured through productivity, it becomes mathematically and systematically impossible to reach. There will always be more to do. There will always be someone doing it faster or cleaner or with a better system. There will always be a new crisis or a new opportunity. The goalposts don’t actually move; the metric is just flawed.

Since our move to Spain, this has become impossible to ignore. Not because life here is slower (it is), but because the drive underneath it is different. People still work hard and are ambitious. They care deeply about their families and their futures. The difference is that the culture doesn’t use exhaustion as a badge of honor. Rest isn’t a luxury or a personal development initiative. It’s simply part of being a human being with relationships and a life outside of work.

At first, this was disorienting. I’d built a career on being the one who could handle more, so the idea of not constantly proving that is still quite uncomfortable. But gradually, as my nervous system adjusted, I began to feel a kind of clarity I hadn’t experienced in years. Without constant striving in the background, I could hear my own thinking again. I could see which pressures were real and which were only inherited. And I could begin to redefine what “enough” meant on my own terms.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe:

Enough isn’t a finish line or a feeling of arrival. It’s a boundary.

Enough might look like choosing depth over breadth in your work.
It might look like a calendar with truly open-ended buffers instead of back-to-back commitments.
It might look like disappointing someone so you don’t disappear from yourself.
It might look like asking for help before you’re drowning, instead of after.
It might look like building a company that doesn’t collapse if you step away for a week.

Leaders often assume that redefining enough means lowering ambition. I’ve found the opposite to be true. When you define enough with clarity, you create the space needed for better thinking, better leadership, better decisions, and better relationships. You stop operating from fear or scarcity, and you start operating from steadiness.

I still have big goals. Perhaps bigger than ever. I still care deeply about building things that matter. What’s changed is how I decide what is worth my energy. What’s changed is how I measure progress. What’s changed is the quiet confidence that comes from not trying to outrun myself.

So the question I’ve been asking lately is not, “Have I done enough today?”

It’s, “Is the way I’m moving through my life aligned with the person I want to be?”

Answering that honestly requires a different kind of courage. The kind that doesn’t reward busyness but clarity. The kind that reminds us that enough is not something to earn but something to define. It can be the scary kind of courage but it’s also the kind you rarely regret.