03/27/2026
Steven Bartlett is fabulous, but this notion stopped me cold:
"I started calculating the "Enough Number" for each role in my life. What's the minimum attention each person / thing actually needs to feel valued?
Melanie: 5-minute daily call plus scattered proof-of-thought moments
Gym: 30 minutes, 4 days a week (not 7)
Mum: One proper call per week
Every single Enough Number was dramatically lower than what I'd been holding myself to."
This post made feel incredibly sad.
For Steven Bartlett and his health and his fiancée.
Adrenaline and success guzzling at the expense of savoring the climb, and the people who matter. Including himself.
My approach is the opposite of "what's the minimum attention needed to make someone feel valued."
It is "What's the most I could do?"
Scale vs. right sized success.
What do you think?
I proposed to Melanie in Morocco. She said yes. Best moment of my life.
Within hours, I was on a plane for four weeks across five continents.
Cape Town. Europe. Middle East. New York. Miami. LA. Vegas. In the last week alone, I've been in five US cities, had meetings that could reshape my company's next decade, been in rooms I'd dreamed about.
And somewhere between timezone three and meeting four, that familiar feeling crept in: guilt.
Layered, compounding guilt about not calling Melanie enough, missing the gym for the 5th day running, being distracted in a podcast recording because my head was split between company drama and the conversation in front of me.
How can you be hitting professional highs while feeling like you're failing everyone personally?
I have ADHD with hyperfocus - when I lock into something, everything else stops existing. Melanie, the gym, my mum, eating. All on mute until someone unmutes it by being upset.
So I researched guilt. Turns out it evolved as a tribal correction mechanism. You took too much food? Guilt nudged you to give some back.
But crucially, your roles were few - parent, hunter, tribesman - and everyone lived in the same village. Walk across camp, fix the problem, guilt resolved.
Now I have six roles across different cities and timezones. The guilt system designed for managing a village is trying to manage a life spread across thousands of miles. It fires constantly with no way to correct it.
I call this the GUILT GAP - the distance between what people actually need from you versus what you think they need.
I was torturing myself over not giving Melanie two hours of quality time nightly while travelling six countries. After an honest conversation, she said: "I just love knowing you're thinking about me even when you're not here."
Turns out she wanted three minutes and a stupid dog photo. Not hours of presence.
Professor John Gottman's research shows lasting relationships aren't about time spent together - they're about consistently responding to tiny "bids for connection." A photo. A voice note. Responding to the Instagram reel she forwards.
I started calculating the "Enough Number" for each role in my life. What's the minimum attention each person / thing actually needs to feel valued?
Melanie: 5-minute daily call plus scattered proof-of-thought moments
Gym: 30 minutes, 4 days a week (not 7)
Mum: One proper call per week
Every single Enough Number was dramatically lower than what I'd been holding myself to.
When the standard is 100% for everything (600% total), you do what humans do with impossible tasks - avoid them and fall well below. When you know the actual Enough Number, you hit it consistently.
This week I called Melanie every single day. Seven days of guilt used to get me one distracted half-conversation per week.
Less guilt. More presence. Actually better at everything!
Can you relate?
