Pareto Effect

Today I am paying lip service to what is called the Pareto effect or the 80/20 rule. This is an important rule that took me a few months to properly grasp. The gist of the 80/20 rule is that 20% of an input is responsible for 80% of the output. What Pareto noticed was that 20% of the people in Italy own 80% of the wealth. This was similar to all the countries at the time. Moreover, 80/20 is the minimum. The ratio ranges to 95/5 and even 99/1.

What's important is that the things you do have disproportionate results. Ceterus paribus, a hour of work can achieve more depending on what you are working on. Look for the important, high-yielding work and avoid monotonous drone work (or skim through it as quickly as possible). Ignore the minutiae and look for things that pull the most weight.

From my experience, this is much easier than said than done. I learned about about a year ago and have recently gotten the hang of it.

The biggest obstacle for me was dealing with that tiny voice that says, "what are you doing?! you won't be prepared if you don't do x,y,z." Once you take the leap though, it's all downhill from there. Just sit back, watch you're productivity skyrocket, and find something to do with your new found time.

Parkinson's law

Isn't it weird how some days you're able to cram god's know how much work and other days you have difficulty driving to the store a few bits of groceries?

Enter Parkinson's law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Basically, the work and motivaton devoted to a certain project is related to the time you give it. If you give something really easy a long deadline, it's unlikely it'll happen anytime soon. On the other hand, if you give a large project a short leash, you'll be surprised at what can be done.

If given an uncomfortably short time for a project, you'll do just what's necessary to complete it with little to no drop in performance. If given a long time, you'll start dwelling on the minutiae.

The takeaway is to be okay with "good enough." You don't need to be perfect and it'll most likely have the same result as if it were. I've given this law a few go's and it hasn't let me down yet.

Fun (in a way) Firefox add-on

Have you ever been in the middle of doing something and you get that sudden urge to check out facebook or find fun movies on youtube? I definitely have. It completely ruins whatever work zen I have.

Then I found LeechBlock. It's this program that blocks a set of websites for a select period of time. When I first tried this program, the novelty was amusing. I would go to a site and get redirected to a page that prevented me from facebook, textsfromlastnight, etc. Then I was frustrated, I couldn't do the things I wanted to do. What about that music video I've been rolling around in my head? How am I supposed to play it? Weird thing was that I realized I would always try to go to one of my "killing time" sites whenever I was about to tackle a hunk of work. The sub-conscious can be a crafty saboteur.

Suffice it to say, my results per hour multiplied. Once I would get over these bumps, where before I would surf around to avoid them, I was able to get into the zone and crank out a sizable bit of work.

So whenever I have a hefty bit of work to do, I always turn to LeechBlock. Try it out, see what you think.