the 60% readiness rule: the cure to overthinking
how embracing the passing grade mentality pushed me towards action. to practice what I preach, I only proof-read this 5 times instead of 20.
I was incredibly scared of publishing my first piece of written content. If you could take a snapshot of my brain the day before it went live, it would’ve looked like a swarm of ants facing imminent extermination, but at 10x the speed (advance apologies for the mortifying mental picture). The fear came from a mix of not knowing if my English writing was good enough, if I’m even qualified to be writing content on a role while only having 2 years of work experience, or if those reading it would enjoy or agree with it. Lo and behold, the very opposite occurred — I’ve received an overwhelming amount of positive response from readers, and a ton of fresh takes and parallels drawn on the topic. In other words, I clearly overthought it, which made me almost consider completely scrapping it.
Overcoming this phenomenon has been a work in progress for me for a long time, mainly because in both my professional and personal life, there are many things to get done and little time to do them, which leaves no room for overthinking.
So this one is for all the chronic overthinkers who want to do great things in life. It breaks down:
my best guesses as to why this manifests frequently among us,
signals to help us recognize it, and
how to stop overthinking with the passing grade mentality.
I believe these tips are what made me spend less time on thinking, and more on doing. By leading me to take more calculated risks, great things came out of it.
I hope this will also be the last time you will be thinking too much about overthinking.
🏚️ what stops us from taking action
the education system taught us to optimize for the As
Besides all the bad jokes our teachers made in class, and the numerous presentations I’ve made where I heard my script paper shaking louder than my own voice, a core memory I have of my journey in school is the combination of all the times I’ve stressed out about not getting As in every subject. The education system conditioned us to believing that leaving a multiple choice question blank or answering “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” on a test would be equivalent to a failure, so in order to be of value, we needed to strive for getting everything right. Even though a lot of us managed to build a strong foundation for our future, life after school, especially in high ambiguity environments such as startups or product management roles often constrains us with wicked problems, which are ones that don’t have a proven or defined blueprint to finding a solution (as defined in Range, an influential book in my life). Thus, being conditioned into embodying this “straight As or failure” mindset puts pressure on getting everything right, rather than simply feeling ready enough, and can reduce bias towards action. Because this shaped most people’s most formative years, it is naturally a hard pattern to unlearn.
fear of failure or incompetence
Growing up, I was constantly praised for the ability to learn quickly, whether it’d be a sport, a language, a musical instrument, a dance style, or certain academic subjects. This not only fed my ego, but also my fear of not meeting the brand I’ve created for myself in anything that I do. Unfortunately, my peers’ best intentions turned into a recurring demon for myself: I became scared every time I had to perform an activity, or learn or do something new, because I saw every failure as an event that disproves that I am a fast learner. It even resulted in me telling myself to avoid doing so, and simply stick with what I’m comfortable with for the rest of my life. This type of thinking is limiting and quite dangerous for anyone seeking growth in their life, because 1) without putting yourself in novel situations, we can only manage to solve kind problems or thrive in familiar environments which restrains our skills repertoire, and 2) we forget the fact that competence doesn’t come to us magically but requires putting in effort.
fear of being disliked
Being an avid consumer of online content, whether it would be news, social media posts, essays or YouTube videos, I always saw how easy it is to judge, and publicly criticize people who themselves out there. There are in fact mechanisms built to make judgment and public reviews easier — think about the comment sections, the thumbs up/down feature, and star rating schemes that are omnipresent on all types of digital platforms. When barrier to judgment is so low, our fear of being criticized naturally jumps through the roof. This can definitely hurt our ability to get things done especially when the end result is available to everyone, because as social creatures, we innately and inevitably attribute a significant portion of self-worth to our peers’ perception of us.
🩺 how the symptoms manifest
Whenever I feel like I’m overthinking, I know I am challenging myself and growing, because I feel uncertain about the outcome of something new I’m taking on — by no means is this purely negative for us, but it definitely can slow down the process of achieving our goals. Before trying to find solutions, it’s important to recognize how this phenomenon shows up uniquely for us, as we are all different. Over the years, here are the 2 main symptoms that I’ve learned to recognize that all signal overthinking.
frequent “what if” questioning
In 2023, I just ran my first half-marathon. I never thought this would be possible, and overthought about the consequences. What if I’m not physically in good shape, what if I didn’t train enough, what if I do it but am not as fast as my runner friends, what if I never finish it, what if my asthma triggers again, so on and so forth. Often, these questions stem from insecurity, which leads us to over-index on having a clear answer before doing something. To combat this, we need to recognize that the more unanswered questions we have, the more uncertainty we derive as a result of performing the activity, and the only way to uncover answers to those questions is to either build back-up plans, or to do it then see what happens. The good thing is that the moment we catch ourselves asking these is also when we are going out of our comfort zone — this time, I immediately knew I would experience improvement in my cardiovascular fitness the moment these questions surfaced.
perfectionism before action
I used to be that person that reread anything from a 10-character Facebook message to a 1000-word long work email 1000 times before sending it, because I wanted it to be free of typos and worded perfectly. Professionally, this also occurs whenever I would be sending a status update or even a quick Slack message to an important stakeholder. I considered my message structure and content to be a reflection of the product manager I was in my teammates’ eyes. This “pre-launch” anxiety is a clear sign that I’m going out of my comfort zone, which usually is good sign. But it is crucial not to misinterpret this as an expectation to do things perfectly, to the point where we never take action, simply because we cannot fully control our audience’s reactions to what we put out. As perfection doesn’t exist, it’s pointless to strive for it, and in certain professional situations (e.g. being a product manager), it can be the limiting factor to achieving velocity — or simply, achieving.
🌻 tips on embodying the 60% readiness mentality
This year, three things I’ve done were quite unimaginable for me:
Running my first half-marathon
Publishing my first public written piece
Moving to a city in a new continent where I didn’t know a single person
Younger me would’ve stopped me from doing it the moment these thoughts appeared. But here’s what helped me shift my mindset.
recognize that 100% readiness doesn’t exist
As someone living with asthma since being 3 years old, I never thought completing a half-marathon would have been possible because of the belief that bearing imperfect lungs meant never becoming a good runner. But as the majority of my new friends were incredible runners, I decided to challenge myself to running a half-marathon. Somehow, succumbing to peer pressure led to a great discovery that might be a no-brainer for all runners reading this: half-marathon runners don’t run the full 21 kms before the race. I was told that it is not time-efficient, and will take a painful recovery process that isn’t worth experiencing especially before the actual race. In other words, there is no way to be fully ready for something, nor is it good to be in order to achieve it. We can never fully predict the outcome of everything we do, because we don’t control all the variables, and there are many that our brains can’t even anticipate existing — the same way I didn’t know the physical state I would be in on race day, or the wind conditions. When I recognized that a complete rehearsal is never possible, I also understood that 100% readiness for anything in life isn’t needed, and that feeling ready enough for action to be taken is the key to achieve our goals.
experiment to fail and learn fast
There is a reason why PMs and Growth leaders preach the experimentation, or the fail fast mindset. Basically, this conveys that everything is uncertain, and that the only way to test our hypotheses is to try a simpler, smaller, and less costly version of what we actually want to build, just to know if building out and launching the whole idea is even worth our time. This de-risks the idea, and validates its market potential in a cost-effective way. The best realization I’ve made in 2023 is that this mindset is transferrable to every life decision as well. When I made the decision to move to Portugal from Canada, I had nerves almost every single day leading up to it. But I would remember to tell myself that this decision is reversible as it is not permanent. In the worst case scenario, if ever I don’t end up liking my life there, I can still come back to a place that I call home in North America, and try something different later (I say this with a lot of privilege, of course). So embodying the experimentation mindset can actually lead to more calculated risk taking in life moves, just as it does for product decisions.
aim to satisfice, not optimize nor maximize
This concept coincidentally reminds me of the well-known fact that most women tend to only apply for jobs when they meet close to 100% of the requirements, whereas men do so only if they meet half. Knowing this concept, I wanted to challenge myself to step out of this paradigm and shoot my shot for an APM program at a big tech company with little prior product management experience. If you had asked me, I not only felt underprepared for the interview as had not practiced any product management case interviews before beginning the process, but I also felt extremely intimidated by the thousands of Ivey League applicants with a technical background that were competing for the same spot as me. I felt not even 50% ready for the interview or the job and had a lot of self-doubt. But with some self-encouragement and the help of many supportive friends, I decided to shoot my shot anyway, which eventually ended up in landing a role with a 0.7% acceptance rate. Even after accepting the offer, I really did not think of myself as fully ready product manager, nor even after successfully graduating and securing a return offer from the program. But had I not submitted my application and instead waited to optimize my application and maximize my qualification match, I doubt I’d have broken into this highly competitive role. Often times, satisficing + doing is more valuable than waiting + maximizing.
🧗🏻♀️ embracing the passing grade mentality
If you are currently on the fence about pursuing something of high passion, novelty, and uncertainty, I hope that striving for the passing grade will at least change your mind on waiting any longer to take a risk. Want to move abroad to that city you’ve always dreamt of? Want to learn an instrument? Or realizing that standup comedy script idea catching dust in a 183-day long untouched folder? What about launching that side business you’ve always wanted to pursue? This is the only time in any article that I will advise you turning to a corny little slogan for advice: Nike already told you what to do, before I did 💫
☕️ let’s chat
If you have an idea or thoughts about the article, or are a current product manager, or looking to break into product management, or early-career person — book time with me here to chat.