The Desert of Arizona
Looks Like Rain 68 Degrees
Not long ago, I read Perry Marshall’s book about the 80/20 rule… aka the Pareto Principle. If you haven’t gotten a copy, read it.
I get the point of the 80/20 rule. I get that a minority of inputs generally creates a majority of outputs etc. I get that you can apply it to many, many levels and create exponential amounts of improvement with pretty small changes.
What I don’t get is why it’s so easy to waste away your days on the 80%?
Let’s say you read the book. You GET just how powerful the 80/20 rule is and you decide to revolutionize your business (and your life) by putting it into action.
Things are great for a week or two or three, but then something begins to change. Some of the 80% starts to creep back in. A week or two goes by and then a little more.
Pretty soon, you’re back to where you started from. Doing the 20% AND doing the 80%. I find this odd, but I’ve lived it several times so I know it happens.
Aren’t human beings wired to pretty much go after what they want? Don’t they have a relatively low tolerance for doing things they dislike?
So that makes me wonder, what’s the real problem?
I thought about this for quite a while before the answer to that question hit me.
What if you stopped treating 80/20 like a luxury, or a smart business decision and instead engineered a life and business that made it a necessity?
Most of the great things in my life have come as a direct result of me obligating myself to produce in various ways. I do it with the daily Client Letter. I do it with the Rainmaker Letter. I do it with crazy ass deadlines and I do it with 7 kids running around the house.
It’s the way I extract the best out of myself. (It’s really the best answer I’ve come up with so far.) This way, the success I achieve has far less to do with my self discipline and everything to do with the size of my goals, commitments and obligations.
The reason I start to fall back and get weighed down by the 80% in my life is because sometimes, my goals are simply not big enough. My commitments are not plenty enough, my obligations aren’t serious enough.
Even when I think I’ve outdone myself, it turns out my goals are only so-so.
With big enough goals, living the 80/20 way isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity if you’re actually going to achieve anything.
Many service providers struggle because they are trying to achieve things that are NOT big enough. You can just as easily struggle doing that as you can if you’re trying to change the world.
What would happen if you adjusted the size of your goals, obligations and commitments so that concentrating ONLY on the 20% of what you do best became a necessity? Think about that.