The Pareto principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 rule, establishes that 80% of a process' output comes from 20% of the inputs. If we consider our job or school such a process, this would mean that it would take us 20% of our time to achieve 80% of the results we would achieve if we spent all of our time focused on such endeavor.
I had a professor in college, Weibo Gong, who was a big fan of this rule and would quote it on every lecture. His argument was that in order to succeed, we need to achieve a 100% results, and that the 80/20 rule acts as a deceiver, making us believe that excellence can be achieved with little work.
I found Gong's ideology to be common across most hard sciences, where there is one right answer and the only way to obtain it is to have a complete understanding of the material. Being an 'A' student, I accepted the fact that studying 5x (20% vs 100%) times more than other people was the only way to guarantee A's.
But the truth is, that I never studied that much. As a matter of fact, I probably did as much work as anybody else in our class. The key is to spend that 20% of your time the right way, so as to get all of that available 80%, and then add an extra 10% in order to make it to a 90% cumulative result which is generally equivalent to an A.
Now, if that worked in electrical engineering, where we need to be all-knowing in order to ace an exam, what would be the case with more abstract subjects? What about our job? One could say that making the best possible power point presentation for a meeting might be the underlying force behind a promotion. On the other hand, you could do 5 presentations of 'B' quality, and that way be more omnipresent and cover more ground.
Which one do you think is better and why?
2 comments:
First of all I think that success is relative. You need to define what "success" means. If you get a higher grade than another student, then in that area you are more successful. However that other student might have succeeded in being less stressed out, because he did not over exert himself.
I think that you should put 20% effort into everything that you think of as work in your mind. That way you maximize results for the effort. If you enjoy something, then feel free to put in 100%. Don't put in 100% just for the sake of success, especially if the process is painful. Once you find that success you might be momentarily thrilled, but soon things will just feel the same as before. "Success" is societal and a false modern construct. It doesn't truly benefit you except in delusional ways. You should ideally only do things that are enjoyable in the present.
Cover all the ground.
You might just ending up doing 20% of the work for only one topic. Kinda like a lottery.
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