The interim metrics of "enough"

Last week I wrote that burnout ends when you decide what "enough" is. I left out the hard part: how do you actually decide?

The best answer I have doesn't come from psychology. It comes from BCG, from watching what companies do when they change strategy.

"Define enough" is the kind of advice that sounds complete and changes nothing. Here's why: it is much easier to define "more" than to define enough.

More is momentum. This year, grow X% over last year. Easy, because the baseline publishes daily: titles, comps, other people's launches.

Enough is design. It has to come from your strategy and your values, and a new strategy has no baseline. Worse, its real results take years to show.

Companies don't wait those years. They define interim metrics: imperfect, temporary measures that tell you whether you're directionally right while the real results are still loading.

Nobody teaches us to do this for a life. So I built mine.

Enough is measured in inputs, not outcomes: did I act on my values this week, not did the world reward it yet.

Enough is a floor, not a ceiling: a number I define in advance, on a calm day, never renegotiated at 11 PM against someone's highlight reel.

Enough is reviewed quarterly, on purpose, so it can't be silently repealed by one impressive LinkedIn post.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff would call these tiny experiments: when the answer is unclear, you don't wait for certainty. You test.

Some people are genuinely stretched thin, where "enough" is about survival, not psychology. That's a different, realer problem.

But if your exhaustion comes with accolades attached, the discipline is the same one any strategist would prescribe: write down what would count as enough this quarter, before the comparison arrives.

Enough isn't a number you find. It's a decision you keep.