Throughout my 20s, I lived by what I called the “baked potato theory.”
A subpar cook, I was prone to removing spuds from the oven before they were fully edible, which made for a lot of meh dinners improved only by a quick spin in the microwave.
Did that matter to me? Not really.
Cooking has never been my priority, so failing at it, even that consistently, was fine. More importantly, allowing myself to fail—it’s just a baked potato—gave me a roadmap for bigger moments in that decade.
I don’t remember the exact timing or trigger, but if you’d talked to me then, you would have heard me saying something like this:
It’s okay if this isn’t working yet. It’s still baking.
It’s okay if I don’t know how to fix this. I’ll let it bake until I do.
And eventually (no joke): It’s okay if I fail. I’m a baked potato.
Yes, somewhere between the oven and reality, I had decided that the baked potato wasn’t just a starch—it was me in my 20s. Messy, imperfect, half-baked. As long as that first digit was “2,” I could write off any missteps as “baked potato problems.”
I used to tell people: “In my 30s, I will be fully cooked and ready for everything else. But my 20s are just about being in the oven.”
This might be the most compassionate thing I did for myself at that age because it lowered the stakes significantly in every area of my life. Career uncertainty? Baked potato. Massive breakup? Also a spud.
It wasn’t until this past year (I’m now 34) that I started to see how the theory had set my future self up for success as well—at least in how I feel about failure, age, and time.
A few weeks ago, I was telling a 29-year-old about the baked potato speech I’d given at my 30th birthday party. She’d laughed and then said more seriously, “What if I feel like it's too late for me to live by that theory? I only have a few months until my 30th.”
I was genuinely surprised. “Too late” had never occurred to me—even with the big 3-0 oven timer in place.
Instead, post-30 I’d always just…. added to the baked potato lore. Sour cream, chives, an entree. Hell, twice-baked potatoes exist for a reason; throw me back in.
And that was important, because the point had never really been about timing, despite my absolute certainty that I would be better in my 30s. It had always been about making it mentally safe for me to fail and fail again while knowing I was still building toward something.
You don’t outgrow the need for that kind of self-compassion.
I think the baked potato theory worked for me because it challenged the invisible deadlines that are so prevalent in work and life. Titles, salaries, marriage, kids—I used to refer to these milestones as “the conveyor belt,” because I felt like I was one of many being carried down the same path.
Once I lowered the bar (leaned into the potato, if you will), it got easier to see that most trajectories don’t actually work like that. Everyone stalls, restarts, changes course. We reinvent ourselves at inconvenient times.
Which makes the baked potato theory surprisingly useful beyond your 20s.
Not because you should skate by indefinitely—you are, after all, still in an oven—but because you should know that it’s okay to not have all the answers and keep going anyway.
Just let things bake. You’re probably not done yet.
Love what you're reading? From career growth to midday meditations, our email lineup delivers thoughtful insights, relatable data, and space to just be. Add InHerSight to your inbox today. (It's free!)
