Seventy Per Cent⁠↗

The 70% rule: If you’re roughly 70% happy with a piece of writing you’ve produced, you should publish it. If you’re 70% satisfied with a product you’ve created, launch it. If you’re 70% sure a decision is the right one, implement it. And if you’re 70% confident you’ve got what it takes to do something that might make a positive difference to the increasingly alarming era we seem to inhabit? Go ahead and do that thing. (Please!)

Moving forward at 70% takes more guts, more strength of character, than holding out for 100%, because it entails moving forward amid uncertainty, anxiety, and the disagreeable feeling that comes with putting less-than-perfect work into the world.

So every time you release a creative work into the world, or make a commitment, or take an action, despite being no more than 70% satisfied with your output or confident in your abilities, you’re not only bringing something into concrete reality. You’re also expanding your ability to act in the presence of feelings of displeasure, worry and uncertainty, so that you can take more actions, and more ambitious actions, later on.

If you think you might have something to contribute, don’t you have some kind of duty to move forward at 70%, instead of depriving us of your contribution thanks to your finicky and frankly rather self-indulgent insistence on perfection?