Pareto’s Principle

My Friend Makes The 80/20 Rule Look Weak

Garth Beyer

Hard work, and a lot of it, is what it takes to reach any worthy goal.

Smart work is when you put the hard work into the 20 percent of actions that produce 80 percent of results.

The best work is when you can balance everything.

 

I have a friend that nearly invalidates all of these concepts. For the sake of explanation and relativity, I’m going to use weight lifting as an example, but you can exchange it with any line of work.

I’ve been lifting weights for over a year: building muscle, toning it, shaping my body the way I want it. I put in the hard work by lifting until I’m sore, I put in the smart work by following a program, and I put in the best work by making sure that my body is balanced. I was once skinny and scrawny and now I am more filled in and toned. Yet, I have a long way to go until I reach the muscle ratio I want. (Don’t worry, I’m not looking to become freakishly beefy, just extremely fit. To put it in perspective, I plan to do the Iron Man in a few years.)

Now, I have a friend. This friend was in the same situation as me, skinny and scrawny, if not even more skinny and scrawny than I started out being. About three weeks ago he began working out and is catching up to me – fast. No, he won’t be caught up to me in a week or even two, but I can guarantee it won’t take him over a year to get as far as I am now. (Remember, I’ve been going at it for over a year to get where I am!).

My friend, Brett, defies the 80/20 rule, he seems to – before taking any action – figure out how to do 5% of the work that creates 95% of the results. My friend makes the 80/20 rule look weak. He does the hardest work, the genius work, and doesn’t care about balance, he cares about progress. There’s nothing wrong with that right?

Brett has always been this way, not just with lifting weights but with everything else that sparks his interest. What he has taught me – and hopefully, through this post, can teach you – is that there are always ways that you can shorten your invested time and simultaneously strengthen the results. The 80/20 rule is a great place to start, but not the place to stay.

 

Stay Positive & Try The 5/95 Rule, Also Known As Hohler’s Law (as opposed to Pareto’s law of 80/20)

Garth E. Beyer

Becoming A Linchpin In A Cubicle

Garth Beyer

The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, ironically spends the majority of the time discussing the 80/20 rule, or Pareto’s principle. Essentially it states that 80% of the best results come from 20% of the work.

If you want to become indispensable, you don’t have to necessarily leave your cubicle. First let’s look at the three types of cubicle workers.

There are the cogs that know what they need to do, their orders and instructions, and make sure to extend the tasks to take up the entire day. They do the same thing every day and are always working, but not getting anywhere.

Then there are the LOL cogs that know what they need to do, and get it done quickly. They then resume surfing the web and entertaining themselves with hundreds of pictures of LOL cats and chain emails.

Lastly, there are the linchpins in a cog position, that know what they need to do and do it quickly and efficiently. Then they proceed to do more than is asked and because they used the Pareto’s principle, have 80% of their time left over to work on maximizing their art, their creativeness. They use the extra time to be more of a linchpin.

Tim Ferriss shared a way to do all the work necessary for a factory job with minimal time in the office and other time to work on starting up a business. I’m suggesting that the same time can be used at home or in a cubicle.

Everyone has the same 24 hours, but only linchpins risk using their cubicle hours to create something remarkable.

 

Stay Positive & Of Course You Don’t Look Busy, You Did It Right The First Time

Garth E. Beyer