Why Don't You Just Do Both?
Balance sounds reasonable. It's often a lie
“Satisfaction is a feeling or attitude that expresses
a limit or endpoint, that point at which we have ‘enough.’
We can always have more money, more prestige, or more cars.
We cannot, however, have ‘more enough.’ Enough is enough.”
-Emily A. Austin, Living for Pleasure
A retail VP once asked me that question.
I had just told her I was planning to leave. To take a year off to finally write and do stand-up comedy full-time. The thing I’d moved to New York City for a decade earlier.
She looked at me like I was being dramatic: “Why don’t you just do both?”
Because I’d been telling myself that for ten years. “Both” had meant career now, comedy later. Later never came.
The Difference Between Satisfaction and Success
Last week, I wrote about Your Money or Your Life and the idea that satisfaction, not success, is the real measure of a life well-lived.
That idea isn’t new. Epicurus explored it over two thousand years ago.
The philosopher Emily Austin, in her book Living for Pleasure, explains it this way: success has no limit. You can always have more money, more recognition, more titles. But satisfaction expresses an endpoint. It’s the feeling of having enough—and knowing it.
Here’s what makes satisfaction tricky: It has two requirements.
First, you have to actually have enough.
Second, you have to appreciate that you have enough.
Miss either one, and you end up relentless and chasing.
Convinced that the next level will finally feel like the finish line.
Twice, I’ve left a job not for a better offer but for myself. Once in 2018. Once in 2025.
Both times, I was choosing satisfaction over success. But the circumstances couldn’t have been more different.
2018: The Slow Departure
By 2018, I had textbook success. I was a District Manager with eleven stores across three states. The best money I’d ever made.
And I was miserable.
I moved to NYC in 2008 to pursue stand-up comedy. But somewhere in the climb from entry-level to multiple promotions, I stopped performing entirely. I told myself I’d get back to it. Once things calmed down, once I was more secure.
It took me three years to plan my exit. I saved $30,000 and quit in September 2018.
I was terrified. But I was more afraid of never taking the chance.
2025: The Fast Departure
Seven years later, I found myself successful again. I was a Director for an eight-figure online brand. I thought I’d finally found a sustainable version of success.
Then I was sitting in a corporate conference room, watching leadership whitewash a personnel issue I’d flagged. They wanted me to sign off on protecting the company instead of protecting my team.
I felt my stomach drop, and a headache pulsed at the back of my skull.
That was a Wednesday. By the following Tuesday, I had put in my notice.
Effective immediately.
Three years of planning in 2018. Three minutes of clarity in 2025.
What Both Departures Taught Me
The circumstances were different. The timeline was different. But the core was the same: I was finding a way to be true to myself.
In 2018, satisfaction meant protecting my creative side. The person I’d been before ten years of promotions told me who to be.
In 2025, satisfaction meant protecting my integrity. A moral code I wasn’t willing to violate.
Both times, success was asking me to trade something I couldn’t get back.
Austin writes that the only objective measure of success that matters is “our ability to contribute to a community of trust.” Everything else is a recipe for dissatisfaction.
Looking back, that’s exactly what I was protecting in 2025. Not my comfort or my title. But the trust that should exist between a company and its people.
The Lie of “Both”
“Why don’t you just do both?”
It sounds reasonable. Balanced and even mature.
But it’s often a lie we tell ourselves to avoid making a choice.
You can’t serve satisfaction and success when they’re pulling in opposite directions.
Eventually, you have to decide when one gets your loyalty.
If you’re not careful, you’ll sell yourself for success and wake up one day with a title that means nothing and a life that doesn’t feel like yours.
This is scarcity versus sufficiency with ambition.
Scarcity says: success first, satisfaction later. Keep climbing. You can always find balance at the next level.
Sufficiency says: satisfaction is the success. If you have enough and you know it’s enough, you’ve already arrived.
Where the Compass Points
When I bring the ENOUGH Compass to these moments, it asks:
Exhale: Have I paused long enough to know what I actually want?
Undo: What am I holding onto that no longer fits?
Grow Curiously: What would I explore if success weren’t the goal?
Both times, the Compass pointed in the same direction: out.
A Small Practice
This week, notice where you’re being asked to “do both.”
Not as a time management problem, but as a values question.
What are you trying to balance that might actually be in conflict?
And if you choose, which one would let you sleep at night?
See you next week.
P.S. I’d love to know: have you ever faced a moment where “both” wasn’t actually possible? What did you choose?