How Much is Enough?

What does it take to make an impact? What does it mean to have influence? How do you define impact and influence?

The other day a colleague shared that an article they wrote had received over 10,000 views. I caught myself starting to go down the compare and despair rabbit hole.

Wondering what I’m doing wrong. Why I’m not getting those types of numbers despite showing up every day. Feeling bad about myself.

How does that serve me?

It doesn’t.

There’s always another metric to count or a new way to count it. We live in a culture that wants to measure everything. To what end?

In many cases, the metrics we use don’t actually measure what we are purporting to measure.

The number of followers you have is not the same thing as the number of people you influence. The number of people who read your work is not the same as the number of people impacted by your work.

And even if these metrics were good stand ins for what we purport to measure: how much is enough?

One of the problems we run into is that we get sucked into the spin of more.

How many followers is enough? How many subscribers is enough?

What size audience or community do you really need?

Kevin Kelly talked about 1,000 true fans. But do you even need that many?

If you have 100 people who are fully invested in what you’re offering, who believe you’re the only source for what you offer, who are willing to invest, would that be enough?

The constant pursuit of more is a recipe for unhappiness.

In his book Sabbath, Wayne Muller writes that sabbath is a time when we stop counting and rest in sufficiency.

Sufficiency.

Be grateful for what you have, and you will always have enough.