I live in a perpetual state of too much. Too much going on. Too much stuff. Too much to do and too little time. Too much to think about.

However, I realized that I have lived so long in a state of too much that when I start getting back to enough I find other things to add to my heap.

I realized that I don’t know how to do just “enough.”

My wife says I don’t know how to relax. That is probably true.

I don’t say no well. Either to myself or to others. Thus, too much is never enough. I just tend to take on more an more an more.

This has been a problem in my work from time to time. However, it fits well with the work I do and maybe all work. Because, as I get older and have more business years under my belt it seems that the business world does not endeavor to understand enough. Too much is never enough.

This is where they came up with the “do more with less” concept that we now all work under.

By the way, this only sounds good at the top and to the bean counters.

For the rest of us it sounds like, “you can’t say no to the business. You just have to find a way to do it all; and for less than you did it for last year; with less people; in less time. And while you are at it, can you be innovative”

So you know, at this pace innovation becomes finding ways to cut corners.

Therefore, in my business and personal lives I have learned to be in a constant state of having too much going on. So much so, that I think I no longer know how to do “enough”. As such I have no real down time. I am “on the clock” 100% of the time. As I have written about before there are no boundaries in my life.

I find myself fantasizing about taking my bike and just riding west. Not sure why west, but I always think west. Maybe because I long for the isolation of some of the deserts out that way. Regardless, driving or riding to work with the sun coming up my mind drifts to pointing myself west and just going. Alone and isolated from all that pulls upon me allowing the road and the event horizon to be enough.

The bike sounds best for this as I can truly isolate myself on it. If you don’t let the road and the bike be enough when you are riding it you can quickly find yourself part of something you did not see in front of you. And not a good part of that something, typically that means mangled into it.

This is the one time that simply riding can be enough. The one time that more can be less.

So why do I add to my “too much”, more with writing an ministry? Well, like I said, I don’t know how to not do … more. I continue and find, much like this being the first thing I have published in a month, that now I MUST have more going on. I don’t know how to do less. Maybe this is why retirement concerns me just a bit.

Beyond not feeling like I will ever have enough money to retire, I worry that when I do I won’t have enough to do. This is a foolish concept as I can easily fill every day with the volume I have to do outside of work. In fact, that is the part of my life that I get to less than any other. The part that gets put on hold with everything else I have in fight from a business standpoint.

And I should know better. I have watched this lifestyle literally eat others alive.

So how do we get to enough from far too much.

Well, that is a good question that I don’t know I have fully answered and for sure have not fully embraced. But here are my thoughts;

If you don’t love it, don’t do it – yea, I know, it sounds like a cliché. But I am not talking about only doing what you love, but embracing what you do with love. And if you can’t then you really sound move on to something … better. This is where you have to choose and move forward leaving the stuff you don’t love behind.

Is it significant? – Yea, when you are young you may have to just do what you need to get by, to make a living. However, if it is not significant to you and/or others, then you need to question why you are doing it. There may be a very good reason. But are they reasons that will ultimately make you happy, and I have found that happiness is tied to what we feel is significant in our lives. Let’s face it, if you are not making your happiness no one else will! If what you are doing (work or otherwise) with your life doesn’t feel significant, then it is probably not providing much fulfillment.

Is it a ladder? Look, we exist in one of three states; Slide, Plank or Ladder. I like simplicity, so I keep things to threes whenever possible. I can remember threes. So ask yourself; right now, do I feel like my life can best be summed up in slipping down a slide, being on a plank or climbing a ladder. You want to be, for the most part, climbing a ladder. If you are in a slide something is probably wrong. You have accepted a bad habit, lost grip on yourself or some aspect of your life and you are in a downward slide somehow. If you are planking that can be a state of healthy tension, or you could be going to sleep on your plank. You want, at a bare minimum, healthy tension of the plank position. But the best case would be that you are working upward. Not necessarily corporate ladder climbing, although that may be part of it, but you are growing in some area of your life. So ask yourself; Slide/decline? Plank/health tension or idleness? Ladder/growth?

A bit more on “Planking”. I used to think of this position as the lazy man’s position, but I have since realized that much of our lives are spend in plank. We are either idling or we are in a better state of healthy tension. You are riding a healthy line between Plank and Ladder. Growth, any fitness instructor worth their salt will tell you, requires a bit of rest between exercises. This is Plank. But Plank should be rest, tension, rest, tension. It’s about keeping a healthy tension and rest cycle between high intensity climbing. We cannot stay in a constant state of climb. Sooner or later we fall off the ladder from exhaustion.

So what is your “Enough”? What is your state? How are you balancing your Slide, Plank and Ladder?