Focus on your work instead of the rat race.

There is a powerful and hard-to-pinpoint pressure all around us. The goal is to grow. It’s a whisper so constant it almost feels like we’re the ones saying it.

Why? More money. Why? A bigger house. Why? More stuff. Why? Uh, because that means I’m successful, right? The answers get pretty unconvincing pretty quickly. 

If we don’t know what we want or how much we need to achieve it, how will we know when enough is enough?

In the book The One Thing, author Gary Keller teaches us a quick way to look spot a weak-sauce why. Ask people if they want to make a million dollars and pretty much everyone says yes. But the follow-up question is the important one. What are you going to do with the money? Most people only have the vaguest idea of what they want or how much it costs. 

No matter how much we do, there is always more to be done. Another hill to climb. You could always make just a little bit more. It’s easy to forget that the carrot is attached to a string, destined to always be just beyond reach. If we don’t know what we want or how much we need to achieve it, how will we know when enough is enough?

While I was doing research to compile the Tenets of Benevolent Capitalism, I went looking for alternative points of view on growth. I searched every phrase I could think of only to find article after article saying the same thing. The goal is to grow. Only a few niche academic articles pondered whether this ballooning economic growth was good or considered how it might be causing unintentional harm. 

Everything else shouted the same message. The goal is to grow. Not why. Never why. Just how. How to scale your business, sell more, win more customers, hire faster, increase margins, convince customers to spend more, improve shareholder valuation. And on and on it goes. 

“The goal is to grow.” Not why. Never why. Just how.

Slow Growth is the fifth tenet of BENEVOLENT CAPITALISM. Here’s what it says:

This could also be called mindful growth or responsible growth. The global economy has ballooned on a fast growth model of relentless consumption and ever more disposable goods. What we need is not more and faster, but less and better. We need small, thoughtful companies to grow in a sustainable way, creating more solutions than problems, until they eclipse the old economy.

The reason slow growth is on this list is pretty self evident. It’s unsustainable. One look at our environment or the widening wealth gap can tell you that much. But there is another reason it’s on the list. Constant growth is making us unhappy. The model of never-enough is profitable, sure. (For a few, anyway.) But it’s killing us. It’s bleeding into every piece of our life. It’s laptops out during family movie nights and all the little here-and-there moments of work on our phones. And we’re doing it for a finish line that keeps moving. 

It’s easy to forget that the carrot is attached to a string, destined to always be just beyond reach.

If you’re someone who cares about their work, feels meaning in who they serve, and you’re still small… that is okay. Make no mistake, I want you to thrive. But when your work pays for your life and allows you to keep doing the work you care about, that is enough. It’s a quietly radical thing to say enough is enough. It frees you from the rat race. It takes the power away from so many marketing messages. Because the truth is that thriving is about so much more than money. 

So when there’s food on the table and a roof over your head, just remember that you are free to say enough now. You’re not playing to win, after all. You’re playing to keep playing. And that makes all the difference.