I think we have all had the experience when we finish a task and think to ourselves “it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough.” For many of us with a hint or more of ADHD, you may know how simply completing a task at all can be a victory in itself. Still, there is something that nags at us that it is not as good as we can do or even an acceptable level of quality to feel good about checking it off the list.
I get this feeling regularly when cleaning. With a full time job, a spouse who works, and two younger children, free time is not exactly something that I would boast that I have an abundance of. This means that a large portion of my housekeeping duties are done when I have little energy or while I am multitasking as parent, chef, or employee. Needless to say, my attention to detail is compromised and things rarely get as clean as I would like them. My house is not the cleanest, but most of the time, it is simply clean enough.
The issue isn’t the un-mopped floors, though. It is applying this same principle to many other aspects of life simultaneously. At times it may be my work, my relationships, my health, or my finances. All these areas require a lot of work and attention to detail. If I miss enough details at work, I may be looking at participating in the next rough of layoffs. If I miss some (maybe not so) subtle hints from my spouse or kids, that’s a whole different article. All of a sudden the things like finances and health seem like the least urgent thing to get my energy and attention and can settle for “good enough.” That isn’t a good thing, because all of these things I mentioned are key parts of life that, while they take a large amount of time, energy, and attention, they are also the things that help replenish those same resources.
This puts us (or maybe just me) in a strange place. Burning the candle at every possible end is more of a feature than a flaw. Without a doubt, we do more now as average functioning members of society than past generations. We are better equipped from a productivity standpoint, but that does not negate the fact that the number of tasks that we must complete are greater along with the things that simply require maintenance. I enjoy (a bit too much) thinking of the number of bills my grandparents paid compared to me. Sure, I have autopay and they didn’t, but the number alone is staggering. Each bill has a dollar amount, a percentage of my wages, a service that I need to validate a need for, and all the mental real estate that the management of that bill takes up. At some point, those increases in productivity have to rise simply to meet the demand of the increased effort required to maintain some sort of balance.
I think there are a lot of places to point fingers from corporate greed, to government incompetencies, all the way to the very structures of our society, but the truth is that no matter who’s at fault, it is our problem as individuals to solve. We have tons of tools at our disposal to attempt to alleviate the issue from easy access to credit to total abandonment of societal norms, but they don’t quite do the job. No, it really comes down to accepting a level of good enough.
We all do a lot. We can do more and we can do better, but at what cost? We deserve giving ourselves grace in some areas to cater more to the important things, while supporting the weight of our juggling act. Sometimes it is about just biding time until things change to allow for more resources to come available. Sometimes it could be about reworking your priorities entirely to better balance things based on your priorities. We will all be different in the solutions, but one thing is shared between us. Good enough, sometimes, is enough… and that’s ok. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t capable of more or better, but simply that we have things that are more important for us to prioritize at this moment. At least that is what I will tell myself as I sip my wine, staring at a dirty floor after a mediocre meal, a tough day at work, and some solid parent playtime. Today was indeed good enough.