“The secret to success by achieving more with less.”
The 80/20 principle is that a relatively small amount of your effort (~20% of it) leads to the vast majority of your results (~80% of them). This major imbalance is the case whether we’re talking about effort on writing a paper, embracing happiness, doing labwork, teaching a class, or virtually anything else.
Given that 20% of effort or time is leading to most of the output, we can multiply our progress with significantly less effort or time by identifying and expanding that highly effective 20% iteratively.
A key detail: the 80/20 principle does *not* mean you should stop when you reach 80% of your results. (Unless you want to!) It’s not even saying that the first 80% of a task is easy and the last 20% is hard. Rather, it’s saying that out of all the things that you do toward a particular goal/project/activity, 20% of them are much more effective. By concentrating on those really effective things, we can unlock huge potential to do more with less.
Ruth and Claire discuss their experience with the 80/20 principle. Ruth is getting more comfortable with identifying times when ‘good enough is good enough’ but is wondering how to know when the extra push is worth it. Claire identifies a few aspects of her job that she really values and a few that she spends a lot of time on but doesn’t value as much. She considers how to shift her effort around accordingly.
This episode is based on The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less, by Richard Koch.
What are your thoughts on effective effort? Share your thoughts with us at contactprofessorpodcast@gmail.com.
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