The 80/20 rule , let it help you
9th November 2021
Hello you wonderful readers. How is the week progressing?
Day 9 of my November one-a-day challenge. I was meant to have stockpiled a few articles on my days off, well that hasn't happened!
Pumping markets have got me distracted.
How have you been doing with your crypto? Are you taking profits, Hodling, farming, swapping or even staking, what are you doing with your portfolio? Make sure you do your own research and don't get your fingers burnt!
Then, I keep umming and aahing over Splinterlands or Axie. I use to play Titan Throne. In fact, I was a leader of a big strong guild, it was great fun but so time demanding and too many players would spend silly amounts of money. I like the thought of Splinterlands as it is on the Hive blockchain and I have started to write there. The AxieBCH dojo looks super cool too, but too much green (as a Rangers fan we don't do green lol) for me.
Oh well, I shall look around and see if there are any good groups for Splinterlands and then make my mind up. For all of you you Splinterlands players is it still fun?
Enough of that chismiss.
How is your writing going?
Are you worrying that your article has to be perfect, and are spending too much time on it?
Worry no more. Let me show you something.
Have you heard of the Pareto Principle?
It is actually quite a fun principle and I did this for my thesis when I did my Masters in Knowledge Management.
Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist and in 1895 he noticed that about 80% of Italy’s land belonged to 20% of the country’s population.
He thought this was unfair and he then discovered this happened not just in Italy but in every country.
The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, states that often :
80% of the result comes from 20% of the effort.
Now you can apply Pareto's principle all over the place for example:
Taxation— 80% of tax money comes from about 20% of society.
Project Management— 80% of the effect results from 20% of the effort.
Businesses— get 80% of their income from 20% of their customers.
IT— 80% of system crashes are caused by 20% of bugs.
So let's take a look at some fun examples:
80% of car accidents are caused by 20% of young people
80% of lottery tickets are bought by 20% of society
80% of air pollution is caused by 20% of the population
80% of all firearms are used by 20% of the population
80% of all Internet traffic belongs to 20% of websites
80% of car crashes happen within the first 20% of the distance covered
80% of mobile phone calls come from 20% of the population
80% of the time people use 20% of the tools at their disposal
And we can even apply it to this bloody pandemic that we are going through:
It is estimated that 20% of cases are responsible for 80% of local transmission. This means most people won't infect too many other people, but the superspreaders have caused many more people to catch Covid-19.
For example Patient 31 the Korean churchgoer who tested positive and attended mass and was solely responsible for transmitting the virus to a 1000 other massgoers.
As soon as you understand that 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of the time and effort you spend on them, the importance of prioritising becomes obvious.
Here is an important example that we can all relate to:
You have a to-do list with 10 items on it. Each item takes the same time to do. Now identify the two most urgent tasks. As a result, even if you don’t manage to do all the remaining tasks, the 20% you completed could amount to up to 80% of the impact.
The 80/20 Rule and Emoji - can you relate 😂
According to a recent publication from the Unicode Consortium, only three out of 2,600+ emojis—😂, ❤️, and 😍—account for 20% of overall emoji use. To give you more of a context, Facebook users alone send about 1 billion emojis daily.
How the Pareto Principle Can Help You?
I am going to give you two ideas:
Planning your day
Because 20% of your effort will be 80% of the effect of your work, find the activities to focus on that provide the most effect. Identify them and work on them first. Don't neglect the other tasks but do them once you get rid of the big ones.
Your read.cash article
Don't spend 80% of your time trying to perfect the 20%. No, just spend 20% of your time getting the 80% written the rest does not matter so much. Just get writing and you will have your article in a good enough state to be published. I have stopped trying to make them perfect, as this is not time-effective for me.
That my dear reader is all I have today. Now it is time to read more of your articles.
And don't forget ;)
Haste ye back.
I applied that principle when I was in the pharmaceutical industry, 20% of your clients pay 80% of your salary.