The 80/20 rule

The 80-20 rule is simple and powerful. I observe that in day-to-day life and when I think of the world. I am now deliberately using that in a few situations so I get productivity gains.

When you apply it to books, you know that 80 percent of the book takes 20 percent of the time to understand and 20 percent of the book takes 80 percent of the time to understand. So in some cases when you are reading for general knowledge, if you don't try hard to figure out the hard bits, you can read many books in short time.

That is when you read for general knowledge or stories. When you want to finish the books quickly. When you are reading textbooks trying to understand the subject, you should rush over the 80 percent of the pages that is basic things. You should spend only 20 percent of the time there. But you should find out what the hard 20 percent of the subject is and spend 80 percent of the time there. It will be a harrowing experience but you will have understood the concept.

When you learn anything, just identifying the hardest 20 percent of the notes or concepts and mastering that is enough.

Cleaning is another area. To clean 80 percent of your room takes 20 percent of the time. The remaining 20 percent takes 80 percent of the time. So I clean only the 80 percent. (Don't take me for a unhygienic person. I have OCD with respect to handwashing so even if the room is not clean, I am clean.) The excuse is, the room is going to get dirty anyway in a few minutes. The time it gets back to 20 percent dirty is less than the time spent on taking away the last bits of dust. So it better not be done.

Now for software development… They say you have to write tests for all the code. The code coverage report and all. I don't agree. I don't like it. Most of the code you write as a good programmer has to be super simple. It doesn't require testing. Only 20 percent of the code is the most complex or most error prone. Only they need unit tests. I won't test the others. No, I won't. (Not even when AI assistants make it very easy to do it.)

I am going to keep finding more and more ways to apply this in daily life. This is the way to identify the low-hanging fruits and the right domino block in the domino effect.