Comments on: Four reasons we don’t apply the 80/20 rule

By: human mathematics

human mathematics — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:07:38 +0000

I used to think the 80/20 rule derived from the bell curve: just bend over to pick up ±1.5 σ and you’ve gathered 80% of the dollar bills.

But some of the comments (eg, Reza’s) seem to also be referring to diminishing marginal returns. In that sense 80/20 might be suggesting that “it’s OK to not finish a job” as long as you have gotten a sufficient amount of the benefit from work. (Or, it’s OK not to finish your sodapop–if you’re on a diet and got 80% of the pleasure from a few bites.)

The latter would seem to conflict with the superstar effect (Cal Newport, whom you’ve also quoted), wherein returns are magnified at the far positive extreme.

By: Priorities — The Endeavour

Priorities — The Endeavour — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 12:01:48 +0000

[...] switching Four reasons we don’t apply the 80/20 rule ? [...]

By: John Venier

John Venier — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:11:58 +0000

So Jethro Bodine goes to business school, and comes back ready to make money. He gets $10,000 in singles from Mr. Drysdale’s bank and sets to sorting the bills by the cement pond. Uncle Jed comes in and asks him what he’s doing. He says he’s got a sure fire way to make a lot of money. In business school he learned about the 80/20 rule, so there are 2000 singles worth $8000, and he’s sorting them out. Jed says, “Well that’s fine, boy, but how are you going to make any money? The other 8000 singles are only worth $2000.” Jethro replies with a glint in his eye, “That’s easy, Uncle Jed – I’ll sell them to someone who doesn’t know about the 80/20 rule!”

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:21:07 +0000

I agree with Mark. The 80/20 rule is an observation. Which is observed succintly in Barry’s comment.

By: Reza

Reza — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:39:09 +0000

“You’ll get 80% of your results from the first 20% of your efforts.”
I am not sure, but is it that? From FIRST 20%? I think that is not true; not first efforts, because “the first” opposes to unevenly distribution of results which are expecting from the 80/20 rule –Although 80’s scale (successes) and 20’s scale (efforts) are completely different means, they seems that are complicated combined.
In my view, this is a very general rule if we say “the crucial 20%”, we probably means 20% of efforts which are more recognizable as significant parts. Then if we concentrate on them, we will be more skilled till improve to 80/100 as Mark Reid mentioned above.

By: Mark Reid

Mark Reid — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 09:40:20 +0000

Another way of putting the third reason we do not use the 80/20 rule more often is that it is descriptive not prescriptive. It’s easy to look back on your efforts and notice which 20% of inputs accounted for 80% of the outputs but not so easy ahead of time.

There’s also probably an availability bias at play: you tend not to remember all the times the amount of effort was commensurate with the payoff as, well, it’s what you expect! When you get most of the payoff for what seems like only small amounts of effort you tend to remember it. Perhaps in the hope of learning from it and doing it again.

It’s also interesting to note that if you were successful at predicting the 80/20 rule and only focussed your efforts on the crucial 20%, then it would eventually become the 80/100 rule. Much less appealing.

By: John Venier

John Venier — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:52:19 +0000

“LOL@Barry Leiba” — OR –
“LOL” [applying the 80/20 rule to my message string]

Yeah, the 80/20 rule IMO just begs for a beating with the “reductio ad absurdum” stick.

I wrote a long essay about it but “80/20″-ed it into one sentence. The 80/20 rule is just like a screwdriver.

Maybe I’m confusing “80/20″-ized language with laconicism. But isn’t that just like …

By: Barry Leiba

Barry Leiba — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:33:10 +0000

Well, the main thing is really that we don’t need to use it as often as we think. You see, 80% of the success of the rule results from 20% of its application.

Um….