EFFORT
Written by James Ward
There is a theory, a modification of the Pareto principle, which states that it is possible to achieve eighty per cent of your desired results with only twenty per cent of the effort, but it takes an additional eighty per cent of the effort to achieve the remaining twenty per cent of the results.
Now, some people might think that achieving eighty per cent of the result for only twenty per cent of the effort is a good deal. It’s equivalent to a first at degree level. But for me, eighty per cent simply isn’t enough. There’s still twenty per cent out there for grabs. However, the thought of having to apply another eighty per cent of the effort doesn’t sound very appealing.
Fortunately, you don’t have to. You can simply apply twenty per cent of that effort to achieve eighty percent of the remaining results. Eighty per cent of twenty is sixteen. So you can achieve ninety six per cent of your goal with only twenty four per cent of the work.
But why stop there? You’re still four per cent away from perfection. Again, just put in twenty per cent of the effort required and you’ll get eighty per cent of the results. So, that’s an extra 3.2% of your total goal, with only 0.8% extra work. A stunning 99.2% of your original goal, with just 24.8% of the effort required. Taking it even further, you can get eighty per cent of that remaining 0.8% for only 0.64% of total effort. It’s incredible. 99.84% of the results from 24.96% of the work. And, if you apply the same rule one more time, you’ll be able to achieve 99.968% of the results from only 24.992% of the effort. Effectively, this principle means that you can accomplish pretty much anything with only a quarter of the work.
No doubt you are wondering how this principle can be applied to real life. Well, it’s easy. Imagine for example, you were training to run a marathon. The modern marathon is 26 miles 385 yards (42.195 km). Most suckers would think in order to run 26 miles 385 yards, you need to train enough to be able to run 26 miles 385 yards. As I’ve demonstrated above, this is nonsense. As long as you train hard enough to be able to run a quarter of a marathon, you can run a marathon. So if you can run about six and a half miles, you can run twenty six miles just as easily.
This blog post is just over four hundred words, but I only put in the effort required to write a hundred words.
I only read the first 20% of this article, but I got the picture.
“The thought of having to apply another eighty per cent of the effort doesn’t sound very appealing. Fortunately, you don’t have to. You can simply apply twenty per cent of that effort to achieve eighty percent of the remaining results. Eighty per cent of twenty is sixteen. So you can achieve ninety six per cent of your goal with only twenty four per cent of the work.”
No, no. You do indeed achieve 96% of the the goal; but to do it you have to spend the original 20% plus 20% of the remaining 80%, i.e. 16%. So it requires 35% of the effort to achieve 96% of the goal, and by the same logic an additional 20% of the remaining 64% (i.e. 12.4%) to reach 99.2%. That’s a total of 47.4% effort. That’s nearly half, which I think we can agree is too much.
Best just forget the whole thing.