Member-only story
Your Addiction to ‘Growth’ Might Be Making You Miserable
Why slower and smaller is often better
For myriad reasons, the culture of the past two decades has been obsessed with growth. I am going to call this the growth era. In the growth era, it doesn’t so much matter what you are growing — your company, your audience, your income, your network, your muscles, or the size of your house — but just that you are growing. Growth is good, the story goes, and growth is an end in and of itself.
Perhaps it is time reconsider this convention. What if smaller is better?
In my coaching practice, very rarely do I help people get and feel better by adding more to their plates. Rather, improving performance and happiness almost always ends up being the result of subtracting. The same is true in many other realms. I’d rather have a close group of 10 friends than a million followers on Twitter. I’d rather have a newsletter that reaches 20K engaged people (more on that here) than write for a publication that is mailed to 400K, but filled with advertisements and other junk to support its size.
If I was running a grocery store, bookshop, or cafe I’d most definitely rather it be the single best store, shop, or cafe in the world than try to grow it into a chain with hundreds of locations. When my clients chase venture capital…
