You Don't Have To Outrun The Bear - MAC166

Two friends are hiking when a bear comes over the ridge. One of them drops their pack and starts lacing up a pair of running shoes. The other one stares and says, "What are you doing? You can't outrun a bear." And the first one says, "I don't have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you."

I think most of us have that joke backwards. We spend our careers trying to outrun the bear, and the bear always wins. This episode is about what the race actually is, how small the gap needs to be, and how to pick a few small edges that put you on the right side of it.

The Bear Is Perfection

The bear isn't your competition. The bear is perfection: the version of you who never sends a deck with a typo, never asks a question that turns out to be obvious, and never ships a plan until every risk has a mitigation. It's the flawless performer you compare yourself to at eleven o'clock at night. Nobody has ever met that person, including you.

Imagine it's Thursday night and you're on the fourteenth revision of a one-page proposal your manager asked for on Monday. The first version was good. The fourth version was very good. Versions five through fourteen moved some commas, swapped two charts, and put the opening sentence back to what it said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, a peer sent their version of a similar proposal on Wednesday morning. It was fine. It wasn't as good as your fourth draft. And it's already on the agenda for next week's staff meeting. That peer didn't outrun the bear. They outran you.

Coaches who work with perfectionists draw a useful line between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. The adaptive kind sets high standards and then lets you finish. The maladaptive kind keeps you dissatisfied even after you've hit the target, so "more should have been done" becomes the permanent background noise of your work. The first kind can help a career. The second kind quietly stops it.

So here's the reframe. Most of us are running toward perfect. The race is actually about ahead. Perfect is measured against an ideal nobody has ever met. Ahead is measured against the people actually in the race with you. You can't win against perfect. You can absolutely get ahead.

How Small the Gap Really Is

If the race is about ahead, how far ahead do you need to be? Usually a lot less than you'd think. In thirty years of sitting in talent reviews and promotion discussions, I can count on one hand the times the decision came down to brilliant versus mediocre. Those conversations are almost always about two or three people who are all good at their jobs. Their work is similar. Their reviews are similar. Then someone in the room says, "Well, I always know what she's working on," or "He's the one who brought us the fix last quarter," and that's the conversation. It might be ten percent of the difference between two people. In a close race, ten percent is the whole race.

Look at the men's 100-meter final at the Paris Olympics in 2024. For the first time in a wind-legal race, all eight finalists broke ten seconds. Noah Lyles won in 9.79. The man in eighth ran 9.91. Gold beat silver by five thousandths of a second, and it took a photo to tell them apart. Nobody in that race was slow, and nobody was perfect. Gold went to the runner who was a little bit ahead on that night, in that lane. Your career works the same way, except you don't get a photo finish. You get a conversation in a room.

Consider two analysts who produce the same monthly report, with the same quality, deadline, and tools. One sends the report. The other sends it with two sentences at the top: what changed this month, and what they'd watch next month. That's about ten extra minutes. Six months later, a director needs someone to help with a quarterly business review. Whose name comes up? Not the better analyst. The one who was a little bit ahead, where people could see it.

None of this is permission to slow anyone down. In The "Competition" (MAC-050), I made the case that lifting the people around you beats pushing them down, and the bear joke has a dark side I don't endorse: in the joke, you win by letting your friend get eaten. You get ahead by adding one or two small things the rest of the field isn't doing. Who you're actually running against, and why the boring weekly habit beats the heroic weekend, are conversations for a future episode.

The Ten Percent Edge

Every episode of Managing A Career is one edge. Not a mandate, not a new job description, not a list of fifteen things you're failing at. One strategy that, if you actually used it, would put you a little bit ahead of the people around you. I call it a ten percent edge, and the name is deliberate. It isn't supposed to transform you. It's supposed to tip a close race.

I know what happens when people binge a podcast like this one. You listen to six episodes on a long drive, you feel energized, and you come away with a mental list of twenty things you should be doing. Then Monday arrives, the list is too long to start, and you do none of them. So here's a permission and a requirement in one sentence: you don't have to implement all of them, but you should be implementing some of them. All of them is the bear again, perfect wearing a different coat. Some of them is how you get ahead.

The evidence points the same way. One piece on career systems argues that career momentum rarely comes from big, sporadic moves; it's built from small, consistent actions. The people who move are almost never the ones who had one heroic quarter. They're the ones who did three ordinary things every week until the ordinary things added up.

Three Shelves, One Edge Each

Picture the back catalogue of the show as three shelves, and take one edge from each. The first shelf is visibility: making sure the right people know what you're doing and why it matters. The second is relationships: who knows you, who trusts you, and who would say your name in a room you're not in. The third is how you work: the judgment, habits, and approach that make your output worth noticing in the first place.

On the visibility shelf, the simplest edge is Documenting Your Work (MAC-005), which is writing down what you did while you still remember it. The Brag Document (MAC-141) turns that into a running record you can pull from at review time. Busy Is Not Visible (MAC-161) gave you the forwardable update, a short monthly note your manager could send to their boss without changing a word. For the work nobody sees because nothing went wrong, there's The Prevention Ledger (MAC-155). You only need one of those. Pick the one you'd actually do.

On the relationships shelf, start with Building a Network (MAC-029), where depth beats count. The Strategic Audition (MAC-163) is the skip-level one-on-one done on purpose. Your Manager Is Not Your Career Sponsor (MAC-139) reframes who is actually in your corner. And Hope Is Not a Strategy (MAC-165) gave you a method you can run every week: a list of forty and four moves to go with it. Again, one. Not four.

On the how-you-work shelf, the oldest edge on the show is still one of the best: Higher Level Tasks (MAC-001), shifting your time toward judgment work and away from process work. Own the Problem, Bring Solutions (MAC-084) is the habit of never raising a problem without an option attached. Are You Asking the Right Questions? (MAC-150) treats a good question as an edge in itself. And if your problem is simply getting unstuck, Luck When Preparation and Opportunity Meet Action (MAC-162) gave you the smallest visible move. One more time: one from each shelf.

Why three shelves and not three favorites? Because people tend to pick all three edges from the shelf they're already good at. The naturally visible person picks three visibility habits. The person who loves craft picks three craft habits. That's comfortable, and it barely moves you, because you're adding ten percent to the place you're already strong. Spreading across the shelves forces at least one edge into the place you've been ignoring, and that's usually where the ten percent is hiding.

Run It for a Quarter

Once you've picked three, run them for about ninety days. That's long enough for the people around you to notice a pattern and short enough that you'll still remember why you started. A week tells you nothing, because nobody notices anything in a week. A year is too long to stay honest with yourself.

Keep each edge small. One piece on small habits makes the point that modest routines, like a few minutes of daily learning, are the kind that add up to real growth, and that's the right size. If an edge takes more than fifteen or twenty minutes a week, you've picked a project, not a habit, so shrink it. The forwardable update is a monthly note, not a newsletter. The list of forty is a list, not a CRM. The question in a meeting is one question.

At the end of the quarter, sit down for thirty minutes and ask three things. Which edge did I actually do? Which one did someone else notice? Which one quietly stopped after week three? Keep the one that's working. Swap the one that stopped for something else on the same shelf. Then run it again. That's the whole system: three shelves, one edge each, ninety days, review, swap. It's not perfect. That's the point.

If you try it, I'd love to hear how it went. Tell me which three you picked and what happened ninety days later at managingacareer.com/contact. If I get enough of them, I'll bring them into a future episode, because the most useful menu is the one other listeners have already tested.

Your Action Plan

The action plan has four steps, and the first three come with an AI prompt. The reason is specific to this episode: you're too close to your own work to see where you're over-polishing, and you'll be tempted to pick the edges you already like. An assistant has no attachment to either.

1. Name Your Bear. Pick one piece of work you've been polishing past the point where it's getting better, give it a finish date this week, and send it on that date.
2. Pick Three Edges, One per Shelf. Choose one edge for visibility, one for relationships, and one for how you work. Choose the ones you'd actually do, not the ones that sound most impressive.
3. Shrink Each Edge to a Weekly Minimum. Write the smallest version of each edge you could do every week in under twenty minutes. If it needs a new meeting or a new tool, it's too big.
4. Put the Review on Your Calendar. Book thirty minutes, ninety days out, called "Edge review." Then do the first edge once before this week is over.

Close

The joke works because it's honest about one thing: nobody outruns the bear. Not the fastest person on your team, not the most polished, not the one who seems to have it all figured out. But you were never really in a race with the bear. You're in a race with a handful of good people doing roughly the same work you are. A little more visible. A little better connected. A little sharper in how you work. Three edges, each about ten percent, each small enough to actually do.

You don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to start running.

Get the Episode + Prompts

The full episode and show notes are at managingacareer.com/166. The prompts from the action plan are below. Copy them, and change them to fit how you actually work.

Prompt — the bear.

I'm going to paste my current to-do list, the titles of documents I've been editing, and any drafts I haven't sent. Identify the items that look stalled because I'm still polishing them rather than because I'm waiting on someone else. For each one, tell me what in my notes suggests it's stalled, and quote the line. Do not tell me the work is important or that high standards are good; I know. Do not suggest new tasks. If you can't tell whether something is stalled or just in progress, mark it "unclear" and ask me one question instead of guessing.

Prompt — the shelves.

Here is a short description of my role, what I already do well, and where I think I'm being overlooked. Here is also a list of career strategies, each tagged visibility, relationships, or how I work. Suggest exactly one strategy from each of the three groups — three total, no more. For each, explain in two sentences why it fills a gap based only on what I've told you, and quote the part of my description you're relying on. Do not rank strategies by how ambitious they sound, do not suggest more than three, and do not choose anything I've already said I do well. If my description is too thin to choose, ask me one question instead of picking.

Prompt — the minimum.

Here are three career strategies I've chosen and a description of my normal work week. For each strategy, give me the smallest weekly action that would still count, one that takes under twenty minutes and fits inside meetings or tasks I already have. Do not suggest creating new meetings, new documents to maintain, or new tools. If an action depends on someone else agreeing, flag it. Write each action as a single sentence I could put on a sticky note. If you need more detail about my week, ask me rather than assuming.

Links & References

• Research & sources — CoachHub: Eliminate Perfectionism at Work and Embrace Good Enough
• Research & sources — MentorCruise: How to Use Small Daily Systems to Build Long Term Career Momentum
• Research & sources — FDM Group: Small Habits for Career Growth
• Research & sources — World Athletics: Paris 2024 Olympics Report, Men's 100m
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Higher Level Tasks (MAC-001)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Documenting Your Work (MAC-005)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Building a Network (MAC-029)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — The "Competition" (MAC-050)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Own the Problem, Bring Solutions (MAC-084)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Your Manager Is Not Your Career Sponsor (MAC-139)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — The Brag Document (MAC-141)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Are You Asking the Right Questions? (MAC-150)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — The Prevention Ledger (MAC-155)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Busy Is Not Visible (MAC-161)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Luck When Preparation and Opportunity Meet Action (MAC-162)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — The Strategic Audition (MAC-163)
• Related Managing A Career episodes — Hope Is Not a Strategy (MAC-165)
• Episode page — managingacareer.com/166
• Contact (Tell Me Your Story) — managingacareer.com/contact

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