Enough is enough

One of the relentless ills of modern age is, by an absurdly widespread admission, the lack of time. The incessant need to improve ourselves, to increase our productivity, to boost our social status does not leave any space for the incongruous idle time, an unequivocal sign that someone is either lazy or useless, because otherwise they would be investing that time instead of wasting it. But if you think that this is the sign of modern times, please think again: as I mentioned in this post, already in 1973 the German author Michael Ende criticized the custom of being permanently busy in his novel Momo.

Fifty years later, we are starting to realize that this busy-ness does not necessarily correlate with financial success, personal satisfaction or even professional recognition, because plain quantity (how much you do/study/work) does not map directly into quality (how much you actually achieve/learn/produce). Modern gurus are focusing on how to achieve more by doing less. But, from my point of view, they are still flawed (perhaps a bit less flawed than other thinkers) in that they are ultimately focused on quantitative reasoning, rooted on the idea that more is always better, even if they insist on keeping an eye on the actual quality of our work.

Photo: P. L. Tandon

However, this line of though neglects a very important fact of nature: that most elements in the physical world tend to suffer a saturation phenomenon, where an increase of something does not lead to an improvement or can even have adverse effects. Let us just consider food: it is obvious that everybody needs enough food to survive; it is also evident that we all prefer good food over bad one; and finally, it is equally true that we could eat past the point where our needs are covered, providing for some margin in case we have difficulty finding food the next time. At any rate, any activity with an increasing dimension will eventually transition from the necessary to the acceptable, then to the possible and end up in an unattainable range. The question is, of course, where the boundaries are because, by definition, the moment we are done with all our necessary activities we automatically enter the realm of idle time.

This boundary stuck with me since an early age as I watch "The Jungle Book" movie for the first time. Baloo's song "The Bare Necessities" really resonated with me because, as the firstborn son, I tended to worry too much about things, and the song helped me focus on the fact that I had already done as much as I could (and sometimes even way more), so instead of thinking yet another way to contribute to the solution, I should probably sit back and see how my previous intervention played out. Of course, there was always the risk that the previous solution did not work, but by just throwing different solutions to the same problem you are actually less likely to learn what works and what does not.

The uncertainties associated with life unavoidably result in repeated instances of events that could not have been predicted, but because reality almost always tramps fiction, it is generally useless to try to be ready for all eventualities: it does not matter how many you try to address, fate will eventually find a way to put you in front of a situation that you had not contemplated and force you to improvise. It is difficult and scary to go around life knowing that you are not 100% covered, but given that it is a matter of life that cannot be helped, it is simply easier to get used to it and just try to make the best out of a very uphill battle.

The difficulty of this approach lies in the notably tricky question of how much is enough, but also in the dark benefits of hindsight: the information we have at the time of the decision is certainly not the same that we have after a situation has played out, and it is just too easy to think of what we "could have done if only...". But, just as before, the actual fact is that we did not know it, and even if we suspected that things could go that way, we did not have enough evidence (or enough resources) to tackle it, so the only option is to try to learn from the situation and hopefully have better luck next time we have to take a similar decision. Because, one way or another, we are facing decisions every day and we do not have infinite power: there is only so much work we can do, so many people we can talk to, so many hours that we can spend on any given day. And running our reserve counters to zero might improve our chances of success, but it might as well be a minuscule improvement. So please, keep that in mind and try to learn to establish what is enough and not to push yourself too hard. Have a nice weekend.