When the 80/20 Rule Fails: The Downside of Being Effective

https://jamesclear.com/the-downside-of-being-effective

by colinprince • 2 years ago

21 5 2 years ago

helph67• 2 years ago

"The 80/20 Rule would recommend that the most effective course of action would be to focus exclusively on serving these clients (and on finding others like them) and either stop serving others or ". Whereas my understanding is to know which of your clients are regularly contributing to your profits while also trying to improve profits coming from remainder. Those in the remainder may appreciate your help, improving your future results.

bentocorp• 2 years ago

In summary, it can be hard to know what the 80% of things you should concentrate on actually are.

Especially in startups and certain endeavours (e.g. Marketing) it really it is a case of continually trying a lot of things to see if something works.

Once you've discovered what works, you could focus all of your time on that one thing. The problem then is that you have no further opportunities to discover something that is even better. You may have hit a local limit.

So you need to keep trying new things, and potentially wasting time on them, until you can evaluate properly to see if they move to the 80% of things to focus on in the future.

habitue• 2 years ago

Seems like this is just pointing out exploration/exploitation tradeoffs. I don't see how 80/20 has much to do with this.

ilrwbwrkhv• 2 years ago

Honestly, this is where one of the old cliches of go where your heart takes you, works really well. Your heart will tell you if you need to volunteer or start a business or do something else. And you should listen to it, probe it a little bit and see why it wants that.

lazylizard• 2 years ago

the question then is how many sd are you away from median?

When the 80/20 Rule Fails: The Downside of Being Effective

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