The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 351 - Enough

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: So I have some observations from interactions with clients, and these observations are the kind that also feel like a mirror to me and something that I need to pay attention to, and that is this idea that like everyone I feel like I'm talking to at the moment feels stretched, everyone feels like they don't have enough time, everyone feels like their inbox is overflowing, and there's never enough time to do the things they want to do. And it just has me thinking, how do we know when we have done enough? And what does good enough even look like? And how do we think about defining done? And so, not to send us off the deep end, but I would love maybe some coaching from you about how to think about enough and how to think about things that are done.

Jen: Well, I feel an existential crisis coming on. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Listeners, I did say to Jen before we recorded this episode, "I don't want to take us off the deep end, but this is what's on my mind at the moment," so here we are.

Jen: Here we are.

Pete: Existential crisis pending. Let me try and give some examples of where I see this popping up. I feel like, yeah, you're right, we could joke about it, but this could be the kind of topic that just ends up in this like deep rabbit hole of what even is enough. I don't necessarily want to go there, but the way I've been thinking about it...I'll use myself as an example. I, at the moment, am in a chapter of my life where I very deliberately am working compressed hours. So what that looks like is, I work Tuesday to Friday between the hours of roughly let's say eight until three, which is very different to how I've worked in the past in companies or for myself, where it's more like Monday to Friday plus some stuff on the weekends. And the hours, basically they tended to be a lot more. And the unwinding, the unlearning, the constant battle I have of whether that is "enough" work to keep my business maintaining the momentum that I want it to maintain is a mental juggle that I just can't seem to shake, which is fascinating. And then, like I mentioned, I see this also popping up when I talk to clients all the time that I'm coaching, leaders who are like, "If I just had a little bit more time, then I'd get enough time to do the thing to feel like it's done well enough, to feel like I've done enough, to then be able to tie a bow on it and move on to the next project." And so, it's like there's a conversation here around constraints, perhaps. But there's a conversation here, in particular, what I've been playing around with is, how do you define "done" for yourself or how do you define "enough" for yourself? Now, this is a slightly strange angle to take, but there is a concept that is used in agile work methodology, which is this like way of working that a lot of companies have for how people do work, and one of the tenants built into agile methodology is a definition of "done", i.e., for every task that you are working on, you should have a definition of, "This is what done looks like," so that you know when to stop doing it.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I've been thinking about that a lot, as to how it applies to your work. Does this make sense? Is this resonating? Am I going off the deep end? Do you have an existential crisis ready and waiting to happen?

Jen: "Enough" is such a loaded word, Pete. I'm realizing it's like pulsing with emotion.

Pete: Yeah, yeah. It's like "authenticity".

Jen: Right, right. So I did the most John Waldman thing I could think of, and I pulled it up on thevisualthesaurus.com.

Pete: There it is.

Jen: But it's interesting, because there are a couple different things that this word means. And when we know what we're talking about, we know what we're talking about. So "enough" could mean "sufficient", "enough" could mean "plenty", and "enough" could mean "adequate". And those do all have a different tinge to them. Like when you have plenty of something, you have as much as you need.

Pete: Right. 

Jen: That’s why we say something is plentiful, right? 

Pete: Right, yes.

Jen: But when you have adequate, you have just enough, not more than you need. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think about sufficient as like it gets the job done, like, "That's sufficient, like that'll do."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So when I think about, for example, let's use time with my child, I'm like, "Oh, I've got three years left before she goes to college, that doesn't feel like enough time." But three years with something else, I'd be like, "That's sufficient."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: ”That's plentiful." So it just, it feels like we've got to know what we're talking about, in order to answer the question, "What is enough?"

Pete: Right. Like, what I feel like has been the theme of every episode in the last ten weeks is like, the context really matters here.

Jen: Oh my gosh, it's so true.

Pete: And so as you're sharing that, I'm realizing the context that I've spent a lot of time nerding out on and the context that's been relevant to me, which is I think has been part of the grapple, is there's no set rule necessarily that I can point to that goes, "That's the minimum effective dose of hours spent on a project, to know that you've hit the, you know, the sufficient point, and you can let it go." Or something I've unlocked relatively recently, I mean we've talked about this recently with a workout or swimming, is I used to think, because I didn't have a like a very clear description of or a clear idea of what success or enough or sufficient looked like, I used to think I needed to get out of the pool huffing and puffing after an hour. And what I've since learned is, it's enough to do twenty to thirty minutes of drills that are six strokes at a time, as we talked about in the Six Strokes episode. And you leave the pool like with more energy than when you got in, and not puffing and puffing at all.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And so, for me, part of it is I need...maybe it doesn't even need to be external, but I need clarity in what is that minimum, so that I know that when I get there, I almost give myself permission to go, "You did it. It's done. Success has been met, or enough has been met."

Jen: Okay. I'm having a little bit of an aha moment, and I'm reluctant to share it because it requires participation of other people. And I think what you're asking is like, "How do I answer this within myself," but my aha moment is you, Peter Shepherd, and I'm guessing you, listener, and I, Jen Waldman, are very good at acknowledging when someone else is doing more than they need to, and it's enough already. Like as an example, Pete, you sit down with a new client and you ask them to tell you about the challenge that the team is facing. And so, they say the challenge. And you're like, "Okay, great. That's enough." And then, they go into the ten-year history of how they got to this point. And it's like, "That was enough context already, for me to ask you some clarifying questions and help come up with next steps." So like, it's easy to see it in other people, when they've already reached the enough point. Like, I see this with my clients all the time. They send me, you know, take after take after take after take of their audition material. And I'm like, "That's enough. Like, it was good five takes ago. That was good enough."

Pete: Oh my god, yeah, this is so true. Or it's like, when you're reading a book (and oh god, I've had this experience so many times) and you get the punchline of the chapter or the book, or you get the punchline of what the author's trying to say, and you're like, "Okay, we can move on to the next point now." And then, there's like three more anecdotes or stories or pieces of data that reiterate the same thing. And I'm like, "No, no, I got it. I'm catching what you're throwing. Let's move on. I've got enough."

Jen: You know, Pete, it's so funny, I recommend to people the book Who Not How, and I say to them, "But you don't need to open it, because the title is enough. The title is literally the whole point you don't have to read the book."

Pete: That’s such a good example of the book, of like, you get to the first chapter and immediately on the first page, you're like, "Okay, I'm onboard. Yep, I get it. I get it."

Jen: Yeah. Like, "Thank you. Got it. Moving on."

Pete: That is so good, yeah. Part of what I'm realizing or trying to get better at is identifying that for myself, and being cool with that. And so, the work one is such a great example because it's a relevant example for me, because I and many others who are working in professional environments have it drilled into us this arbitrary number of hours that you're meant to work per day or per week, between a set number of hours. And it is so arbitrary. And it does have historical context, that is not necessarily relevant, but it's really hard to undo. And so, how I've been thinking about this for myself is, there's a live experiment I'm happy to share, is if you do two hours of uninterrupted work on one thing that is the most important thing for you that day, that is enough. That is your day. You could do that between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., shut your laptop and walk away and go, "Today was a success." Now, do I do that? No, I don't do that. But I am getting pretty good at going, "Have I had my two-hour chunk today?" Because I'll usually end up doing some emails and some other stuff after that, but I am trying to define for myself that, as being enough. That's success. And if you actually compound two hours of uninterrupted time every day for a few weeks, you get a lot of stuff done in two hours. It's kind of embarrassing that that's the only amount of time you need, because I feel like we're all of this myth of, "You need ten hours every day." But I just don't buy into the reality, that anyone's working productively for ten hours. So that's a live experiment I'm trying right now, is like you define success or enough as two hours of uninterrupted time. And there's some rules around that, like you can do nothing but you can't do anything else.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So you say, "Here's the task I'm doing. I'm either doing that or I'm staring into space. I can't do anything else," which usually means you end up doing the task. And then, that's it. That's enough. And then, you define the next task for the next day, and you kind of try and build up a chain doing that.

Jen: Well, this is interesting because it's bringing up two things. Number one, it's interesting to hear you equate enough with success, so that's interesting to me. But the thing I feel like I want to pick apart (and maybe we can go back to the other point after) is, you're talking about having rules or like things you can check off.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Sometimes, the thing that you're doing is so elusive that the rule of, "You do it for two hours," gives you a way to go like, "Oh, I'll check that off." In my work, sometimes that's true, and then, sometimes not. So, I'm again going back to my clients who send me their audition tapes. There is a criteria that something has to meet in my rule book in order for it to be good enough. And if it doesn't meet that criteria, it then falls into the category of not good enough. For example, if you are singing a song for a Broadway audition, it has to be sung in tune. Now, I know that sounds obvious. But it's, if it's a three-minute song and one thing is like slightly flat and the rest of it is in tune, one might think, "Oh, that's good enough." And I would have to say to my client, if they're asking for my opinion, "That's actually not good enough."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Like, "In the context that you're working in, that would eliminate it from contention for good enough." But like, "I don't like how my hair looks," or, "The lighting's a little wonky," or, "I could have been a little more dropped in," I'm like, "Yeah, that's true, but it's still good enough. But out of tune, not good enough."

Pete: Right, yeah. I like that distinction of, enough doesn't mean there's no room for improvement. Right, yes. But it's a giving yourself a bar (for me, anyway) to cross, to go, "Yeah, there's always things I could do better. And yeah, maybe you would get more done if you did three hours of uninterrupted time instead of two." But I need a threshold at the moment, or I need a bar that goes, "Yeah, you could, and that's enough for this. That's good enough. That's progress enough for this particular thing, in this particular context." Again, like you said, context matters. I also just feel compelled to say, shout out to all my parent friends listening to this. I feel like what I'm probably grappling with is the reality that everyone talks about as being a parent, where you don't feel like you're winning as a professional. You don't necessarily feel like you're doing enough as a parent. You don't necessarily feel like you're doing enough as a partner. Maybe part of this is just that grapple, that cycle. But I still think the point stands, which is recognizing that, "How do you give yourself, for me, something that I could aim for to go, 'Yeah, that is enough.'" Like, spending two hours with Ollie in the afternoon is definitely enough. Yeah, I mean, maybe you could spend five one day, or take a day off here and there, but you have to give yourself some sort of parameter to cross, otherwise you'll be constantly beating yourself up for never doing enough of anything.

Jen: Right. Okay, here's another example of the "enough" concept that came up literally moments before I jumped on this call with you. And in fact, it was the reason I was late to this call, because I was having this conversation with a client.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: So the scenario is, she left her agent and is looking for a new agent, and had identified a very specific small group of offices she wanted to meet with. And she was asking me, "Do you think I should be expanding my search to offices that maybe aren't as fancy? How do I know if these other offices are 'good enough' for me to put my time and my resources in to? And like, how do I know I'm not short-changing myself?" And basically, the answer was, "You are aware of what you can do for yourself. If someone else can do more for you than you can do for yourself, in this moment, that's good enough."

Pete: Right, yeah.

Jen: ”Because what you're trying to do is open new doors. It doesn't have to be a 'good enough, forever'. But it'll be good enough for the one-year contract that you sign."

Pete: Yeah. There's got to be a name for this phenomenon, I totally relate to this, where it's like, "If you're going to make a decision like that, I want to know it's the absolute right decision, having gotten to the bottom of the internet researching every single thing you could possibly imagine. And then, make the decision to do the thing that has the best likelihood of increasing all of these opportunities for me." But you're so right. It's like the enough is, "Is it opening more doors than you're currently opening for yourself?"

Jen: Right. 

Pete: ”Yep. Great. Moving on." 

Jen: Well, Pete, once upon a time, I told you this a couple years ago, I realized that I was expending so much energy worrying about things that did not matter, like making decisions that literally would not impact my life in any sort of meaningful way. And so, one of the ways I was trying to get myself better at that is, when I would go out to eat, I would give myself like a thirty-second limit for making a decision. Because I'm like, "I could sit there and analyze this menu all night long. But at the end of the day, if it doesn't give me food poisoning, everything is good enough. It's all good enough."

Pete: ”If it satiates me...," yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's great. And you know, in the world that we live in with so much access to so many things, and there's always options, and there's always more, and there's always comparisons, I guess it's no wonder that we / I feel like I could question my sense of enough, really, of, "Am I doing enough?"

Jen: Well, I know we're coming toward the end of this, but I just had another aha moment that might be such an emotional bomb drop that I'm afraid to do it. But I'm doing it anyway.

Pete: Drop it. 

Jen: Enough for who? 

Pete: Ooh. I so wanted to just say, "And that is The Long and The Short Of It." But there's probably a whole bunch of conversations we could have, off the back of that. Enough for who?

Jen: Let’s go back to my example of my daughter leaving in three years. The time with her is not enough for me, but the time is enough for her.

Pete: Ooh, that feels uncomfortable. 

Jen: Right? 

Pete: I like it.

Jen: And to my client who's having the agent conundrum, is the agent good enough for her? If this person can get her into more rooms, yes. Is the agent good enough for her to impress her colleagues in the industry? That's another question. 

Pete: Yeah. 

Jen: And maybe another answer.

Pete: And in the context I see this cropping up at work all the time, in the context of a leader saying, "I need to, you know, rewrite this presentation that I have to give tomorrow, because it doesn't feel like it's quite there yet," I would say in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, it's not enough in their mind, but it is totally enough to deliver on the message they need to deliver, to the people in the room who are going to be in the room.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: So that feels like a juicy reminder to think about, enough for who? Well, here goes my existential crisis, everybody. I may or may not see you next week.

Jen: Oh my gosh. Well, Pete, that would not be enough for me. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.