Enough: You're using the wrong metrics

Author Kurt Vonnegut was attending a party of a hedge-fund billionaire on Shelter Island, along with Joseph Heller. Vonnegut told Heller that the hedge fund manager had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his classic novel "Catch-22" over its entire history.

Heller's response? - “Yes, but I have something he will never have — enough.”

I briefly heard this story on a podcast and had to Google it for accuracy. I'm not sure if it's 100% true, but that doesn't matter because the meaning matters most.?

Achieving some level of success in business, life, wealth, and my career, I often question, "what is enough? What does success look like?" Many of the goals I set 5-10 years ago were smashed. So do I keep moving the goalpost further down? When does it end? Is there an end goal? Is this enough??

Most of us who are entrepreneurs always want more. We're always striving to optimize profits, increase revenues, grow our businesses, hire more employees and introduce new products and services. The same rings true for people who want a more significant title, with more responsibilities and larger salaries. There's always another company that will pay more and offers more perks. When will it be enough??

Is $1M enough? $10M? $100M? Do you need a VP title in front of your name? Do you want to buy a house? Is it big enough? Do you want a better car? Start a family? Donate to charity??

We take on more responsibilities for more money, only so we can buy more "things." More often than not, the "things" we purchase are not "needs" but rather "wants." So we aim for more money, and the cycle continues. We trade work-life balance for monetary gain or a title we thought we wanted. And it's never enough.

I'm not saying we should want less and not strive for a better life. I firmly believe that the desire for "more" is what pushes us to build great businesses, innovate and create the lives we deserve. No matter your definition of success, you have the right to aim as high as you want and work to achieve it. But we're setting the wrong goals and using the wrong metrics.?

If we set our goals as a monetary amount or a specific title, you'll never truly be happy. There will always be more to achieve. That could be a good thing because it keeps you motivated toward building a better life. As the saying goes - "Satisfaction of the Death of Desire..." But that ultimate goal you're striving for should be "enough." That's what will truly make you happy. However, the challenge is looking inward to define what "enough" is for you.?

I'm not naive, and I know that we need to tie "enough" to a monetary amount in some way, shape, or form. At a minimum, creating the amount of wealth and a stream of passive income to set a foundation that covers your basic needs should be what most of us strive for in the near term. Once this foundation is in place, you remove money from the equation and can start to envision what "enough" looks like. "Enough" might be spending more time with family, donating your time to a charity or your community, focusing on a passion project, working 4 hours a week, traveling, or moving into the mountains to live off the land. Whatever keeps you fulfilled.

In layman's terms, you need "F#!k You Money". That doesn't necessarily mean becoming stupid rich. "F#!k You Money" means you have enough money to cover your basic needs so that you can tell your employer or clients... "F#!k you". You don't want to take a meeting? Take on a bad client? Attend a conference? Work 5 days a week? Hit a deadline? Write a proposal? "F#!k You." Building a business that relies on you to be present 100% of the time or working for a company where you bust your a$$ and live paycheck to paycheck will never put you in that position. How you develop passive income or build wealth is up to you and beyond the scope of this article. What matters most is that you figure out a way to remove money from the equation.

When Joseph Heller said he had "enough," he could have meant many things, but he also had a wildly successful book that sold millions of copies. So passive income and wealth played somewhat of a role in achieving his version of "enough."

I cannot say what "enough" is for you, and I'm not telling you that you shouldn't strive to make a billion dollars or become a C-level executive. If that's where you want to be and what is important to you, go for it. If you enjoy your career and life, that might be enough to support your basic needs and maintain happiness. But before you can look at what is truly ENOUGH, you need to make money and titles irrelevant.

Utilize money, your career, and business as the vehicles to achieve "enough," don't use them to define it.?

What is enough for you?