More, more, more. We’re surrounded by it.
- Feeling unsatisfied? Buy more stuff.
- Feeling hopeless or helpless? Post more.
- Feeling insecure? Chase more status.
- Feeling insignificant? Get more done.
- You should do more. Make more plans. Have more friends.
- More, more, more.
But it’s never enough. Once you reach “more,” you just raise the bar again. You’ll never own enough, earn enough, achieve enough, or be loved enough to quiet the questions inside or fill the gaps within. “More” is an easy answer, especially in a world that commodifies our time, labor, and attention. But easy answers aren’t always the right ones.
You’re not going to outwork or out-hustle your way through decades of structural challenges facing your team, your institution, or our society. You can’t stay later, come in earlier, or spend Sunday morning clearing your inbox to overcome it all. I know. I’ve tried.
I’m terrible at this. I grew up in a more, more, more culture, in a low-income, rural, farming-focused Midwestern community. There was always more work to do. I still feel that way, even when all the evidence tells me otherwise.
Recently, I spoke with a team that had endured multiple years of budget cuts and staff reductions. It was exhausting and demoralizing. They told me how much they appreciated a new mantra from their leadership:
“We’re no longer going to ask you to do more with less. We’re going to do less with less.”
It was a refreshing and realistic shift. An acknowledgment that priorities had to change—and that the solution wasn’t squeezing more from fewer people with fewer resources.
Almost 20 years ago, someone asked me a simple question that I still think about daily:
“What if you could do less, so you could be more?”
It’s a powerful question. And maybe one that’s better to sit with than to answer. What would it look like to do less so you could be more at work, in your organization, as a parent, or in your relationships?
This is why I often recommend Essentialism by Greg McKeown—it’s the number one book I suggest to coaching clients, curricular approach partners, and friends. The core message is simple: the disciplined pursuit of less. The hardest part? Naming our priorities.
Leaders (and we are all leaders) must be clear about what matters. We must name it. Focus on it. And make the hard decisions that align with it. If you’re a positional leader and you’re struggling to do this, you might be caught in the tyranny of more yourself. Setting priorities can be scary. They might be contested, disagreed with, reveal how out of touch you are, and generally lead to conflict. And that’s what leaders need to do: engage your people in determining your collective priorities, rather than avoiding setting them and simply demanding more.
If you’re not a positional leader, and you’re caught in the tyranny of more, it’s time not just to manage up, but to lead up. Where and how can you influence? How could you do less, so you could be more? How could your organization do less, so you could be more?
