Finding "Enough"
The greatest hunt in watch collecting, and in life.
Can you even remember the excitement of getting your first proper watch?
I can.
It was much more than a simple sense of achievement; I would constantly glance at my wrist, and feel immense pride when someone noticed it. I was filled to the brim with gratitude and wore that watch with a feeling of pure joy for many years.
Now think about your latest purchase. To borrow from Marie Kondo (thanks Josh!), did it “spark the same joy?” I’m going to bet it was rather fleeting, and maybe even that is being generous.
The topic of enough comes up so often in collecting circles, that I feel it will never get old; despite covering it a couple of years ago, I felt a refresh was well overdue. So, when is it enough? What is enough, anyway? How do we know when we’ve reached it? These are the types of questions which should be at the heart of our hobby, but most of us struggle to answer them honestly.
Let’s fix that.
Estimated reading time: ~14 minutes
Hedonic treadmill
I have zero doubt that every single watch collector has experienced this; a new watch arrives, you wear it constantly for a while, and then... something changes. The excitement fades. You spot something on Instagram. You start browsing Chrono24 again. Before long, you’re lining up your next purchase.
This sequence, as it happens, has a name: hedonic adaptation. Over 50 years ago, Brickman and Campbell coined the now-iconic term “hedonic treadmill” in some seminal research which showed that positive events – like getting a new watch – create a temporary happiness spike before we inevitably return to our baseline level of contentment. Later studies confirmed this effect, and they found that even ‘significant’ positive events, such as winning the lottery, do not permanently raise the winner’s happiness levels. That’s a pretty crazy finding to me, because I’d bet most people would be convinced they’d be happier if they won the lottery!
For watch collectors, this research explains what I am sure you can relate to from your own experiences – every new watch provides a shorter-lived thrill than the last. The Batman GMT you thought would be your ‘one watch collection’ at the start of your journey, often turns into ‘just the beginning of a journey into sports models’. A watch which once seemed like the ultimate grail now chills in your watch box while you lust after something even more unattainable.
“Natural desires are limited, but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point. The false has no limits. When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless.”
Why we collect, matters
It feels like stating the obvious to say the way you approach collecting will dramatically affect your satisfaction, so I won’t say that. Instead, I will reference Tim Kasser’s research (also detailed in his book The High Price of Materialism). His work shows that people who chase after possessions primarily for status or external validation tend to report lower well-being, greater anxiety, and reduced levels of ‘connectedness’ with others.
Need I say more?
Just think about your own collection of watches, and decide which ones bring you the most joy. Is it the most expensive one? Or the one with the best story like the one you wore on your wedding day, or the one that reminds you of a career achievement?
What I am getting at here are the ideas of materialism vs. intrinsic motivation - when you frame watches primarily as status symbols (external, materialistic) instead of seeing them as sources of personal joy or appreciation of craftsmanship (intrinsic), you are setting yourself up for perpetual dissatisfaction. If you’re unhappy with your collection it probably isn’t because you have too few watches; you’re unhappy because someone else has more. You might be perfectly content with your collection until you see someone else’s Instagram post; in an instant, what made you happy yesterday makes you miserable today… but why? Nothing has actually changed, right?
External validation is a terrible mistress, and it relates directly to what researchers call “acquisition centrality” versus “possession centrality.” This old paper by Marsha Richins noted that materialists often get more pleasure from buying things (acquisition centrality) than from actually owning them (possession centrality). When people get too addicted to the hunt instead of ever realising the value of basic appreciation, it quite literally creates a cycle of chronic dissatisfaction – exactly what we see in collectors who can’t stop buying new watches (despite rarely ever wearing the ones they already have!).
The point is, how many of us work harder to earn more money to buy more watches, all while sacrificing the time we could be enjoying the watches we already have?
Finding satisfaction
To better understand why some collectors might feel fulfilled while others seem to be perpetually dissatisfied, let’s look at some more research. Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is an approach to human motivation and personality which says that humans have three basic psychological needs: autonomy (making your own choices), competence (mastering skills and knowledge), and relatedness (connecting with others). As a watch collector, your collecting habits satisfying these needs will make you more likely to experience genuine fulfilment. Some examples might be:
Autonomy: Do you choose watches based on personal taste (your own choice), or are you chasing whatever’s hyped or being worn by your favourite celebrity (not your choice)?
Competence: Do you develop your own expertise about watchmaking, history, and mechanics, or do you just accumulate watches with no knowledge or understanding? Do you even know why you bought every watch you own? Is it just because it looks shiny? What are you, five?
Relatedness: Do you connect with a community of fellow enthusiasts and share knowledge / appreciation, or are you collecting in isolation?
Every collector I personally know who seems satisfied with their collection, and isn’t constantly hunting something, appears to approach the hobby as a journey of learning and connection. They literally have no interest in competition with others for ‘the most impressive’ (or valuable, or any other title) collection. They only ever make purchases which are aligned with their personal values and interests (autonomy), they have an immense curiosity when it comes to understanding the technical details of their watches (competence), and they also actively engage with a community of like-minded enthusiasts (relatedness). Sure, this might be my confirmation bias kicking in, but I have tried to think of contrarian examples, and I’ve failed!
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
Epictetus
Gratitude matters
One of the most powerful antidotes to the ‘never enough’ mindset is gratitude (read this old post, it is very short). You don’t have to take my word for it either; research has found people who regularly recorded things they were grateful for, reported significantly higher well-being than those who focused on hassles or neutral events. Hardly surprising, right?
For us collectors, gratitude might look like this: Just pull out your favourite watch. Hold it in your hands. Really look at it – the way light changes the appearance of dial, the precision (or lack thereof!) of the hands and indices, and then flip it over and bring a loupe. Think about the history of that specific design, and the skill and creativity which went into making it. Then think back to all the occasions when you’ve worn it. What did it feel like? Why did you pick that watch on that day? Finally, think back to when you first thought about buying it; why did you want one? How did you come to buy it? What did it feel like when you first put it on your wrist? Take it all in.
There is even more research which supports what I am saying here; they talk about the concept of “savouring” i.e. deliberately extending and enhancing your positive experiences. This research showed that people who consciously savour experiences, tend to report greater life satisfaction and happiness.
So rather than quickly moving on to your next acquisition, savouring is exactly what it says on the tin: try to fully experience what you already have. How often do you consciously notice the weight of your watch on your wrist, or just stop and appreciate the steady ticking of the escapement or the smooth sweep of the seconds hand? I swear, I do this multiple times a day! As it happens, these small moments of mindful appreciation have the power to interrupt the hedonic treadmill, and they will help you rediscover joy in watches that you may have started taking for granted.
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.”
Socrates
Moving targets
Watch collecting is one of the best places to observe what philosophers call the moving target problem of desire. Every time you get close to what you (previously) thought was ‘enough’, the finish line moves further away. A £5,000 grail can quickly become a £10,000 grail, then a £50,000 grail, and before you know it, it’s £250,000+! It is probably true for many readers, that a collection which would have blown your mind five years ago, now seems a bit pedestrian! Isn’t that insane?
This problem is only made worse by social media; the exposure to others’ collections is what continuously resets all our mental reference points. I’ve discussed “social comparison” at length, and won’t expand on it here; but this transforms everything into a status game, and economists describe it as the pursuit of “positional goods,” (items which are valued because others don’t have them).
If you enter a room full of collectors at Watches and Wonders wearing a Patek Philippe sky moon tourbillon, there is a small part of you which really hopes someone will notice. You can’t wait for it. You might deny it, but that bit of recognition from a fellow enthusiast does deliver a dopamine hit which is unlike anything else in the hobby. The problem with status games is that they are zero-sum; for someone to win, someone else must lose. If everyone owns a Royal Oak, it no longer confers the same status to the wearer. This then creates an endless spiral, because the very thing which makes these watches desirable basically guarantees we will never truly be satisfied with what we have (cycle: we want rare things, we get it, we notice it’s not so rare anymore, we want another rarer thing… everyone’s doing the same… it never ends).
Sounds grim. But let’s continue.