The Pareto trap - The Art of Communicating

The Pareto rule sounds like a clever may to do more in less time. But here’s a different perspective …

Transcript

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The Pareto rule suggests that for many tasks you can achieve about 80% of the

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result with about 20% of the effort.

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But should you?

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Let's say you’re juggling 10 tasks each with just 20% of the effort of what

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it would take you to do them at 100%.

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And let's assume that those 100% are what the majority agrees to be a really well

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done job while 80% are still an okay job.

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Doing the math, you will end up with 10 results that are okay, which sounds

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like a really smart move, right because if you invest the same amount of time

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to deliver 100% of the result, you'd end up with only two jobs completed.

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Here's where it gets interesting.

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What if you invested the same amount of time to deliver one

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result that blows our minds.

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The appeal of the Pareto principle is that it suggests you can do more in less time.

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Which is fine as long as you're okay with delivering okay jobs.

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okay jobs will get your attention for okay jobs.

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Or in other words, none at all.

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You've delivered 10 times average, which is still average.

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No-one's going to recognize you for any of these jobs.

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But when you blow our minds, you've got our attention.

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That's how Rafael Nadal got famous for winning more grand slam tennis

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tournaments than anyone else.

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He isn't okay at 10 sports, or even really good at two.

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He's exceptional at one.

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That's also how Pink Floyd got famous for dark side of the moon or how Stanley

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Kubrick got famous for his movies.

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All of them decided that they’d better focus on one thing at a time and

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blow our minds with it than become okay at doing 10 things at once.

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This is, of course, a choice.

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