What is enough?
The power of internalizing opportunity cost
This has become my mantra for the past two years.
I’ve used it when figuring out how much income we’re able and willing to forego to have extended time off with our first child when she was born.
I’ve used it when figuring out how much we’re willing to spend on a house without sacrificing our lifestyle.
I’ve used it to afford starting my coaching practice.
And I used it yesterday to get out of what would otherwise be a highly urgent, stressful situation:
Yesterday, I got a text from our friends who are staying at our new place in the town we’re moving to come July. It was a photo of the land transfer tax of $10,000. Due...yesterday.
We’ve been anticipating this bill for months, and were shocked we didn’t receive it yet. Turns out the bill was buried under the useless flyers that collect in all our mailboxes.
We had the $10K in cash in our investment account since we saw this coming, but we didn’t think we’d have a few hours to pay. It takes a day or two to get the cash to our chequing account, so we were worried about being late on a massive bill.
I emailed our wealth advisor. Our friends offered to chip in as much as possible to make ends meet. I was about to ask my mom if she could spot us just for the two days.
The worry went on for a few hours, until I took a step back and questioned things without my emotional overlay.
I asked ChatGPT what would exactly happen if we were late by a couple of days based on the photo of the bill.
$4 in interest. That would be the cost of being late on this massive payment.
Perception is everything, so I did what I love doing most: I found another framing that is equally true but 10x more liberating.
$4 was the cost of being worry-free for the next 48 hours, and to avoid making other people’s lives more complicated. Seen another way, the collective worry and stress if we were to fenangle a way to pay the bill on time would be worth $4.
Pretty shitty deal, right?
This is what I mean when I tell my clients that a deep understanding of anything reveals the path forward, whether it be a perceived problem, a relationship with someone else, or our own internal issues.
As soon as I stopped treating the bill payment as a problem to solve, and focused my attention instead on understanding the situation as clearly as possible, a solution emerged organically.
And the reason I don’t believe in treating things as problems to solve is that there is no actual correct or optimal solution to my situation, generally speaking. (Extended from that is my understanding that there is no ground truth, but that’s for another essay.)
There are simply options and trade-offs. It’s up to me, and each one of us, to select the optimal option based on our individual priorities.
As you can see, it’s critical to figure out what the hell you’re living for in the first place. I don’t mean this in the abstract sense because that quickly gets us nowhere in reality.
I’m talking about having important conversations with yourself and anyone else implicated by your decisions, to determine what you’re maximizing, and what consequences you're comfortable with absorbing.
For my wife and I, after a certain amount of income, which we’ve defined as enough, I choose to trade excess money for more time. That has consequences beyond money, like less status and prestige, less luxury items, and less comfort.
Because I’ve put in this work, it’s easy for me to see the best path forward for myself.
This process applies to more than just money and career, and possessions.
Once I do create more time by turning down more money, I use the same line of thinking for figuring out how to use my time.
Example: I could spend all my free time with my daughter, who is growing up faster than I can keep up with, but then I’d lose all my friends. Conversely, I could go to concerts with my friends, but then I’d have no energy the following morning for my daughter.
Another example: I sacrifice having any clear identity (as a swimmer, a climber, someone who loves cooking, someone who is well-versed on Buddhism, etc.) for the freedom to do whatever I want to do in a given moment as long as it fits my internal criteria of being valuable.
Determining what is enough, in pretty much everything I do, has changed my life.
A prerequisite to being able to figure out what is my threshold for enoughness is the sensitivity to feel what I am satisfied with.
Using my head to figure out how much time with my daughter is enough leads to confusion. Obviously, I want all the time in the world with her.
I used to unconsciously measure success as a parent, partly based on how much time I spend with my child. I envisioned picking up my daughter at 2 or 3pm and taking care of her the rest of the day (my wife works a lot right now). In practice, I learned that I have little interest in spending time with my daughter since it comes at the cost of doing deep work, thinking creatively, getting movement, or spending time with people I love.
I’ve come to realize, as with anything in life, that not all hours are equal; passed a certain point, time with my daughter becomes challenging and is no longer super enjoyable.
That point is what I call the enoughness threshold: the point where I’ve gotten enough of whatever the thing is, and there are not just diminishing returns, but often negative returns if I consider the opportunity cost on other aspects of my life.
It’s for this reason that I’ve narrowed my close friends to about five, and dedicate disproportionate time to them. If I chose to keep five additional friends close to me, I would simply have less time for the initial five close friends.
Developing sensitivity or awareness is crucial to determine one’s enoughness threshold. Without the self-understanding of at which point things are no longer high-yield, we end up unconsciously compromising on other parts of our lives.
And determining one’s enoughness threshold is key to making quick decisions in ambiguity. Our world is only getting more uncertain, and I’m sure it’s clear to you that it’s not going to wait around for you to figure out what path to walk down.
Making high-leverage, powerful decisions is what has always set people apart from mediocrity. Only now things are even more ambiguous, more unpredictable, and more difficult to keep pace with.
Thanks for writing this, it clarifys a lot, making me wonder what if that mantra didnt bring such clarity when things become truly uncertain.
Insight: enoughness if felt, not rationalized.
Thanks Aatik!