We’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule. It states that twenty percent of the effort you put into something yields eighty percent of the results. By the same logic, you wear twenty percent of your wardrobe eighty percent of the time, which means you probably don’t really need the other twenty percent. Twenty percent of a salesperson’s clients will yield eighty percent of the sales.
The 80/20 rule is a way of prioritizing what’s important, figuring out what gives us the best results for the least amount of effort, and how we can trim non-essential actions and distractions from our lives.
The highest performing sports teams in the world focus most of their time and energy on drilling the basics. The vast majority of the results you achieve from any activity is dependent on mastering the basics.
The vast majority of the words we use in everyday life in any language belong to a tiny subset of the total words in that language. Most people hardly ever use the word watermelon in everyday life. Complex, specialized words like asphyxiate are also much less common unless you happen to work in that particular specialty field.
The 80/20 rule is extremely common and widespread especially in the personal development world. Nearly every so-called influencer peddles this rule.
Today I’m going to bust this myth by saying that the 80/20 rule isn’t a thing. The rule isn’t 80/20. It’s actually more like 98/2.
Whatever you’re doing, ninety-eight percent of your results are going to come from doing one thing—maybe two. Even if it’s two, one will be much more important than the other.
You already know what you need to do. One thing you do is the most important—much more important than any other.
Apply the same logic to any sport, language, and maybe even your wardrobe and the tools in your kitchen. The basic drills of any sport make up ninety-eight percent of what the sportsperson should focus on.
The more complicated, less common moves make the person an expert, but ninety-eight percent of their results are going to come from just doing the basics, both in practice and in performance.
The same is true for any artform. The highest performing musicians spend most of their time practicing scales, arpeggios, and drills exactly the same way beginners do. The vast majority of what a professional musician does in performance falls into the category of scales, arpeggios, and drills—not fancy flourishes. The vast majority of what we consider expert musical improvisation falls into this category, too. The best musicians know this. That’s how they can exploit their knowledge and make it look effortless—because it is effortless.
What about languages? The words we use in any language on a daily basis do not comprise twenty percent of the language. We use at most a thousand words in everyday life—usually far fewer.
This is why so many people believe that dogs can understand us. A dog has about a two-hundred-word vocabulary—the same as a two-year-old child. Most of us use the same two hundred words again and again and again. We repeat the same phrases day in and day out to carry on our daily activities. Few of us vary from this except maybe in a professional setting.
My kids’ dad had a bonsai hobby. He owned books written in Japanese that identified different species of azaleas that were particular to his interest in the hobby.
He once stayed at a hostel where a bunch of Japanese tourists were also staying. He approached them with one of his books and asked them to translate some of the text so he could understand what the book was saying about those particular species.
These Japanese people couldn’t read the specialized kanji in this book because they’d never studied that particular art form. This would be akin to one of us listening to a medical lecture discussing the different effects of anesthesia drugs. We wouldn’t understand much of what the professionals were talking about because we wouldn’t understand the terminology.
Do you want to master something—anything—any sport, art, activity, language, skill, business, or life process?
Forget about twenty percent. Focus on the two percent instead. Master that.
If you’re learning an artform, the chances are high that there is only one thing you need to focus on doing and doing it well. The importance of everything else in that field falls so far down to the bottom of the priority list that it isn’t even on the horizon.
The number one thing in my work is creative focus. I can introduce any of a dozen “life hacks” and gimmicks to try to make my job easier and to get myself into a flow.
The number one factor in my work is focus. None of that other stuff matters. Sure, there are friction points along the way. I can reduce those, but most of these gimmicks can’t take the place of focus. I could be accomplishing just about anything if I just focused.
I already know what I need to do. Thinking a gimmick or life hack is going to make it easier is just another distraction that will stop me from focusing the way I should.
Twenty percent is too broad. Making a list of five critical tasks you have to accomplish each day is too many tasks. The list should have one thing on it—nothing more. You already know what this task is.
Everything else is a distraction and probably a waste of time.
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