Every winter, I get anxious about getting enough time in skiing. Every year, I fantasise about living somewhere with a “proper winter” (and a “proper summer”, for that matter). It's only a short season after all; weekends playing skittles on the commercial fields aren't my thing, and our weather makes it notoriously difficult to plan mid-weekers in advance.

But how much is enough? If I ski for no reason other than pleasure, does it make any kind of sense to get anxious about it? I had a similar experience cutting back on training after Godzone. Rationally, I understood that I didn't need to be out hammering myself every day. Even so, it took a long time for the nagging sense that I wasn't doing enough to dampen down. I think that applies in other situations, too.

You could ask the same question about information. I have a hoard of podcasts and books set aside for a rainy day. As much as it rains, the stack keeps getting bigger. Every so often I purge it, and am invariably dogged by the feeling that I may be missing some important detail. Why? The recesses of my mind don't want for extraneous details. In fact, considering that I know about this proclivity of mine, why do I buy the books in the first place? 

Maybe I'm overly optimistic about what I can get done. Maybe it’s that I just like acquiring stuff — whether that "stuff" is knowledge, experience, or material property. I wouldn’t be alone. Whole academic careers (not to mention corporate empires) have been built on the human drive for more. Minimalism may be gaining a niche following, but the average house keeps getting bigger — along with the supply of trinkets to fill it with. Steady state economics and frugal living are attractive conceptually ... but in practice, we mostly think about what to do with our hard-earned cash, not whether to do anything with it.  

Recently, I started looking to replace my ageing Subaru. The equivalent, new model is perfectly nice and (unsurprisingly) drives much like my old car, minus the rattles and creaks. My old car has served me admirably, I've been happy with it, and there's no real reason for me to buy anything else. But there's a problem: if I’m spending tens of thousands of dollars, I don’t want something that feels like my old car. I want some sort of sensory reward for parting with all that money. So, inevitably, I start rationalising buying the next model up: I don't need keyless ignition, but I can think of occasions when it'd be convenient. First world problems, right? 

Or are they? Is it just modern consumerism, or is there something more deeply wired into our psyche? Something that tells us to compete, to strive, to want more … even if we already have enough? Like bower birds, we can't help showing off to potential partners — and competitors. Like so many squirrels gathering acorns in the autumn, we have an instinctual drive to prepare for future adversity. We humans don't exhaust our supply of acorns over the winter, though, so the stockpile gets bigger and bigger. 

A man's satisfaction with his salary depends on whether he makes more than his wife's sister's husband

— H.L. Mencken

Standard economics would have you believe that people make a purchasing decisions on the instrumental basis of whether the benefit of buying exceeds the cost of doing so. That should provide a measure of how much is enough, right? I ran a cost calculator over the various cars that meet my functional requirements: the most economical isn't the one I'm going to buy. All sorts of social and psychological factors influence what we want.

And so, like it or not, I get antsy about sunny winter's days spent inside. Even though the cumulative emotional distress of wanting to get out skiing probably outweighs the enjoyment of actually doing so. Only once have I skied so much in a season that I lost interest in heading back to the hill.

Which leads me to suspect that you only ultimately know how much "enough" was once you've exceeded it.