The Complexity of Enough
Dispelling 'The Doctrine of Better' & Reaching 'Points of Enough' in Our Personal Lives.
This essay is part of a Circles in Time series called ‘Seeing Ourselves as Systems’. Subscribe here to get access to future posts.
The world is obsessed with self-improvement.
As a market, the self-improvement industry is valued at over $40 billion and climbing rapidly. Bumper stickers like ‘1% better everyday’ are preached by self-help gurus across the internet, and theories like growth mindset have entered mainstream discourse.
We want to be better. Healthier. Stronger. Wealthier. Happier. Kinder.
That’s great.. right?
Like many other people, I have been a firm believer in ‘The Doctrine of Better’. I still am to a certain extent.
But a few years ago, I started to notice a slight agitation arising in me. A feeling that, for a long time, I couldn’t quite explain. A sense that there was something off about the ‘Doctrine of Better’.
Eventually, I found the space to step back and examine this feeling of discomfort.
I realised that my discomfort with self-improvement and The Doctrine of Better arose from an observation that the whole ideology was set up as a neverending chase.
That there are no ‘points of enough’.
In fact, to have enough or to be enough was to settle, which was in a sense the antithesis of ‘better’. Sacrilege.
Pursuing perpetual self-improvement makes sense in two contexts.
SITUATIONS OF SCARCITY
In situations of scarcity, where being slightly better at competing for particular resources could mean the difference between life and death, winning and losing, access or an opportunity missed. Most of us are lucky to live in a state of relative abundance, where the need to compete over scarce resources has become a rare scenario to find ourselves in.PROJECTS OF PASSION
When you are sincerely pursuing a passion, but in this case, any additional time, effort and attention you can spend immersed in the activity is a delight. Any sense of improvement is an afterthought—a product of the craft rather than the point of it.
For the majority of our endeavours, The Doctrine of Better is actually not applicable.
In fact, I’d go further - not only is perpetual self-improvement not applicable, but it is also actually harmful. A dangerous farce that leads us to waste time on the menial, creates costly externalities, stretches us thin and distracts us from the essential.
Why do we do it then? What is at the root of this madness?
The short answer is that we tend to default to perpetual improvement because setting 'points of enough' is difficult.
I don't want to be a professional athlete, but I know exercise is important for my health and longevity. How do I know when I am doing enough exercise?
Or that my diet is healthy enough? Or that I am sleeping for long enough? Or that I am making enough monthly income? Or that I am investing enough?
It is much easier (and more psychologically satisfying) to just seek constant betterment in all our endeavours.
To make the implications of perpetual self-improvement and The Doctrine of Better more apparent, intuitive and concrete, let me share a short story with you about a woman called Maya.
Dispelling the Doctrine of Better | A Short Story
It was a slow Monday morning in April. Maya, a 33-year-old front-end developer, was sitting in a slump at her desk, waiting for the third cup of coffee to kick in.
In anticipation of the coming caffeine kick, she justified a brief hit of social media scrolling to pass the time. Her drug of choice? Instagram.
Two taps on the phone screen and her thumb had assumed its mechanical upward flicking motion, moving Maya mindlessly down the social stream.
All of a sudden, something caught Maya’s attention.
It was a post by Kamala, a distant friend of hers. A friend with who Maya hadn’t connected directly with in years but felt familiar from following online.
The post was similar to all of Kamala’s others: Having just completed an intense morning run, she was showing off her route and the rich breakfast she was indulging in as a reward, at a new restaurant that had just opened in a nearby neighbourhood.
‘Good for you’, Maya thought, as a feeling of lack and inferiority began to take hold.
All of a sudden, she was anxious, a state of mind that wasn’t helped by the caffeine that was starting to pulse through her system.
She liked the post and closed the app.
Maya got back to work, but the discomfort created by Kamala’s post hung around - like a splinter that has lodged itself just below the skin. Visible but too deep to get out.
After an hour of partially productive coding, Maya had, had enough. She needed to do something.
Maya knew the comparison with Kamala wasn’t doing her any good. Still, at the same time, she had promised herself to get back into running - knowing very well that exercise was important for her health, well being and productivity.
Perhaps she could use the current discomfort as fuel to get her back up and running again.
And so it began! Then and there.
Maya committed to running twice a week in the mornings before work, with the aim of running 10 kilometres in an hour before starting her day.
She approached the exercise slowly initially, walking most of the time and often turning back or taking shortcuts to slice her 10 km in half.
Fortunately, Maya found an easily accessible and enjoyable route. She coordinated with two friends to keep her accountable and added ‘running’ as an interest in her bios across the internet. She also purchased a Fitbit and set up Strava tracking for feedback and a bit of social pressure.
After two months, Maya had found her stride.
She had worked her way up to running 10km twice a week. She was feeling fit, happy with her body, sleeping well and found it easy to get into deep states of focus for work.
She had hit her goal! And she was happy with herself and her progress.
For a while…
Maya kept going with the 10 km twice a week routine, but something started to happen to her after four months. She had stopped seeing as much change as she was used to. Her body weight began to stabilise. She also wasn’t feeling as motivated as she had been in the past. The excitement of the whole endeavour seemed to be wearing off.
She had also caught up with the fitness levels of her friends like Kamala. She thought she would be happy with this, but for some reason, she wasn’t. In fact, she was spending more and more time tracking the progress of more serious runners on Strava and following more athletic individuals on Instagram.
Her reference point was shifting, and with it, who she compared herself against.
All of a sudden, that mental splinter starting showing up again.
Sure, Maya was in shape. She was sleeping well. Her energy levels her stable. She had put herself on a path to long term health. But this wasn’t enough. The sense of lack was back.
She wanted to do more. To be more.
There was a gap between her expectations and her current state, and that gap needed to be closed. So she decided to up the ante.
A new goal! 21 km twice a week.
Here we go, she thought, that’s a real challenge!
And it was! She was aiming to run the equivalent of a full marathon over the course of a week. Every week…
Her friends ‘Change, Progress and Improvement were back!
She saw muscles she didn’t even know existed. Her body was getting stronger and leaner with every passing week. She was getting better!
The progress felt good. People were paying attention. Well, the people that mattered to Maya anyway.
Everything was going well.
But after getting to 21km and remaining there for a while, her body started to adapt again, and progress waned.
The mental splinter was back, and it seemed to have more of a presence this time. Running had moved from the background to the foreground of Maya’s identity. Taking root in how she saw herself and how she evaluated her success.
What to do? Time to move the goalposts again! The cycle continued.
It is now eight months in.
Maya is sitting at a restaurant table, face locked on the phone, flicking her right thumb against the screen in that familiar way we all know.
I greet her.
David: “Hello, Maya, it’s lovely to see you again.”
She looks up at me with a slight smile. I can see she’s a bit stressed and tired.
“Don’t get up.”, I say calmly.
Maya: “Thanks David, yes sorry, I’m exhausted. My run this morning took longer than expected and I have been playing catchup ever since.”
David: “Of course, no problem. How is the running going?”
Maya: “It’s good. I’m doing close to 50 km a week, and I’ve got another marathon coming up in a month that I’m feeling ready for”
David: “You’ve come a long way this year. Remember when you started, you were struggling to do 10 kilometres!”
Maya: “Yeah, I suppose. Especially when you look at it like that. It’s funny though, it doesn’t really feel like I thought it would.”
David: “How did you expect it to feel?”
Maya: “I don’t know. But not like this. Maybe I just need to keep going. The problem is that it is getting harder to improve, and the whole thing is starting to take a toll on other areas of my life.”
David: “What do you mean? How is it taking a toll?”
Maya: “In lots of ways. My runs average around 25 km, which takes more than 2 hrs out of my mornings.”
David: “I see. So you’re starting work later?”
Maya: “Yeah, sure. That’s part of the problem, especially because my afternoons are normally quite a mess. But I also can’t take my kids to school anymore. I get back from the run too late. I just get an Uber to pick them up. It’s a small thing, but you know, I’m seeing less of them. Ubers also aren’t cheap. Neither is all the extra food I am buying to make up the calories. I’m also exhausted by around 7 pm, which means I’m socialising less at night. It’s all these little things if that makes sense.”
David: “It does make sense. What if you pulled back on the running a bit? You could do 10km in under an hour. You’d be able to lift the kids, and perhaps it would solve some of those other problems too, right?”
Maya: “Yeah, the other thing is that I’m starting to pick up these little niggles. I don’t think my body is recovering fully between runs.
David: “So slow it down. What’s stopping you?
Maya: “Yeah, maybe. The funny thing is that I actually don’t even enjoy the experience of running that much. But it’s also not that simple. I’d be going backwards. What about all my progress? And how would everyone see me?”
Here’s a hard truth to swallow.
The psychological tools that are so powerful in resolving our self-control challenges, building consistent practices, and forming healthy habits are the same tools that can lock us into perpetual improvement spirals that push us way past our ‘points of enough’.
For Maya, taking on the identity of a ‘runner’, tracking her progress, sharing her success on Strava and comparing herself to other runners were all incredibly effective tools in getting up her routine up and running. The benefits were visible and felt.
But her running didn’t operate in a vacuum. There were trade-offs.
Stepping back, Maya could see her running routine was just one sub-system in a complex array of interconnected systems, all influencing one another.
At one point, Maya’s running system had been a complement to her other systems. She was feeling healthy. She was sleeping well. She had lots of energy. She was more effective with her work.
As Maya continued to improve, though, her running system went from a symbiotic complement to something that was putting strain on the other systems that were important to her. She was spending less time with her children. Working less, spending more money and socialising less in the evenings.
The very thing that had resolved so much of her discomfort was now causing her pain and regret. Good enough wasn’t quite enough for her. She needed more.
As the author, Morgan Housel, puts it:
“The idea of having ‘enough’ might look like conservatism, leaving opportunity and potential on the table. That’s not quite right. ‘Enough’ is realizing that the opposite - an insatiable appetite for more - will push you to the point of regret.”
Housel was writing about this within the context of personal finance, but the insight applies broadly. Pushing past points of enough can often cause a lot more harm than good.
So how do we identify points of enough? How far should Maya aim to run and how frequently?
There is no silver bullet here. The problem is complex. You have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
There are, however, a few principles and frameworks that are likely to be helpful in understanding. For example, The ‘Repeated Bout Effect’, ‘Diminishing Marginal Gains’, ‘Mimetic Desire’ and ‘Hedonic Adaptation’. Seeing ourselves as the complex adaptive systems that we are is fundamental too.
Addressing this difficulty and figuring out our ‘points of enough’ will be the subject of future posts in this series.
However, the first step is to reflect on how attached you are to The Doctrine of Better and perpetual self-improvement more broadly. For some, this won’t seem like a big deal. For others, it may feel like a violent attack on the core of their identity and world view.
Either way, reflection here will be helpful.
This free post is a part of the Circles in Time series called Seeing Ourselves as Systems.
If you are not currently a paying Circles in Time member, you can subscribe here (first 30 days free) to get access to future posts in the series, join conversations relating to this topic on the community platform and Clubhouse.
Take care,
David