Just Enough
When embarking on a new ambition or task, the goal to reach everybody is alluring. But often, just reaching enough people is fine; reaching everybody would be a pointless and exhausting ordeal. Here are some examples.
In public health, you don’t need everyone to be vaccinated against a disease. You only need to reach herd immunity for the population to be safe.
In business, you don’t need to sell to everyone. You only need to serve enough people who will buy your product to be profitable.
In friendships, you don’t need to please everyone. You only need enough friends to make you feel heard and accepted.
In many domains, the question isn’t how can I maximise my reach? but rather, what is enough, and how can I best serve these people?
One thought on “Just Enough”
I think we’re a culture obsessed with numbers further pressed by social media buttons that make us feel large or small according to response. I think you’ve named an important reflection and one that doesn’t really have to do with quantity at all but more a sense of satisfying an existing need. Not so much as a commodity but rather a desire to impact. I find this true in poetry. Numbers falsely represent a kind of validity where simply persisting in a given course for the purpose of both deepening and widening one’s perspective is the artist’s task.