Saturday, December 5, 2009

When Is It Enough?


124*(365)
Originally uploaded by will vastine

At what point are you satisfied? When will you be content? What's enough? When do you have enough money? How much profit is enough profit? How many cars is enough? How large of a house do you really need? Can you be content with what you have right now?

I've seen businesses whose entire culture is such that they are never satisfied. Nothing is ever good enough. Even when employees meet and even exceed expectations, there's always something else that was done wrong and that's what receives the attention. It's like working for that overbearing parent who will never be happy, no matter what the child does. The employees in that environment take out their frustration that comes from never being good enough on their customers. They give up. They show up for the paycheck. They don't care what happens when they go to work, because whatever happens and whatever they accomplish will never be good enough.

There's a line that's somewhere between working toward improvement and greed. It should never be crossed.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Tim,

Satisfaction is the death of desire.

Lala Green

Andrew Weaver said...

Lala,
I would agree that you must be careful that you do not become so satisfied that it leads to inaction or laziness. However, there's a point where desire can become a bad thing as well, and I think that's what I was trying to address.

Greed is a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as in money or more material items) than is needed and primarily that is what I was warning against. We need desire in order to accomplish things, but when you allow that desire to blind you to the important things in life, you're crossing a line that should not be crossed.