The 80/20 Rule

Although dominated by dollars, business is an inexact science—more so than its quantitative nature would suggest.  In business, we frequently employ a concept known as the 80/20 rule.  This rule allows us to consider a limited portion of the problem, assuming that 80% of the effect is contributed by 20% of the causes.  During my professional career in the healthcare information technology industry I was able to simplify problem-solving by looking at, for example, the 20% of insurance carriers that cover 80% of a hospital’s patients, 20% of counties in which 80% of the population lives, and 80% of service-related systems problems that are attributable to a few known bugs.

The 80/20 rule is an interesting concept in that it allows businesses to get to “end of job” without actually finishing—simply by addressing only the big ticket items.  It is permission to employ a rather large rounding error to a problem or a set of problems, banking on the customer’s willingness to find satisfaction in seeing that most of the hard work is done.  It is the momentum that moves American businesses forward, shoring up the perfect with just good enough.  We declare victory and move on, telling ourselves not to “sweat the small stuff” or to “wait for the new version.”

The 80/20 rule is very useful in all facets of life.  When my husband and I lived in a tiny Victorian flat in San Francisco many years ago we did not have enough room for all of our possessions.  There was always some portion of clutter—20% of our stuff, I’ll guess—that floated from room to room and corner to corner.  When we had one of our frequent parties, we would take those stacks of items for which there was no home and stow them away temporarily in the trunks of our cars.

Or, on our recent trip to Italy, when we found our ten allotted days was not nearly enough to digest three of the greatest cities in Europe.  We hit the major highlights—the Vatican, the Uffizi Gallery, the gondola ride, the Trevi Fountain, the Duomo, the island of Murano—but were unable to see the  wonderful Galileo Museum in Florence, or wander deep into the neighborhoods of Venice.

How many times have we poured batter into a tray of 12 cupcake liners, not wanting to deal with the remaining scoops of batter in the mixing bowl?  How often do we clean the house thoroughly but ignore the dust hiding behind objects on the top shelf?  I have a basket in my laundry room containing a growing pile of unmatched socks, but seldom do I direct my energy toward finding the one or two pairs that might emerge if I dumped it out to analyze.

This 80/20 rule has served me well until now.  I am on a mission to write 366 blogs in 366 days.  I hit my 80% mark ten days ago, yet here I am, still plodding through, trying to string together 1000 words every day with greater and greater effort.  After this blog it is a countdown of my last 50.  There is no “good enough;” I must complete this task 100%.  In true 80/20 fashion, I probably exhausted 80% of my creative ideas with the first 20% of my blogs, telling you more than you care to know about my childhood, my kids, my college days, and my professional life.  I found inspirations in headlines and acts of G-d.  I wrote the occasional Shakespearean-style sonnet, and offered some of my family’s favorite recipes.  It has been hard to maintain this rhythm of life every day, through sickness, family crisis, vacation, and just plain exhaustion.  That some 20% of you are still reading along humbles me.

Pareto be damned, this challenge will not succumb to a rule of thumb.  I am in this to the bitter end.  I hope you are, too.