That’s a fancy name for the 80/20 Rule – the idea that 80% of what happens comes from 20% of the causes: 20% of the population controls 80% of the wealth. 20% of customers account for 80% of your business. 80% of the peas in your garden come from 20% of your pea plants.
Applied to relationships, it means that under even under the best of circumstances, you will only get about 80% of what you need in life from your partner. The other 20% you have to find within. And this is why there are so many divorces. For a lot of people, 80% isn’t enough. They don’t feel good enough about themselves; they think another person is responsible for their total happiness. So they start to think their partner is the problem. And they go back out looking for 100%. For a while, they think they find it, but here’s the deal – nobody will ever provide these people with 100%...because the problem is not the partner, the problem is inside the person who is unhappy.
In my experience, I think women are much better at filling that 20% they don’t get from their husbands. Women are emotionally stronger; we have great networks of friends that help us and we talk things out with them. The women I know accept that life and people are imperfect and they can still be very happy with a man who forgets their birthday, swears more than they like or always forgets to stop and buy the milk. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying there are not grievous reasons to leave a marriage. But leaving because your wife nags you to turn off the lights is a sign you have some internal work to do.
Applied to work, I created a draft strategic plan in May. Six months later, I still can’t seem to lock it down; my boss keeps tweaking and tweaking. In this case, 80% of the value of the strategic plan was achieved in the first 20% of the effort. And that 80% was probably “good enough”. Similarly, my team is trying to standardize a new incident reporting process on a new IT platform. Standardization is hard work – it’s inevitable that not everyone will get what they want. Right now, 80% of the obstacles on this project are coming from about 20% of the potential users – but boy are they loud. You may know these people; they are called Squeaky Wheels.
See, here’s the thing – even though the Law of the Vital Few has it’s basis in mathematics (the Pareto Principle), too many people hate math.
Applied to relationships, it means that under even under the best of circumstances, you will only get about 80% of what you need in life from your partner. The other 20% you have to find within. And this is why there are so many divorces. For a lot of people, 80% isn’t enough. They don’t feel good enough about themselves; they think another person is responsible for their total happiness. So they start to think their partner is the problem. And they go back out looking for 100%. For a while, they think they find it, but here’s the deal – nobody will ever provide these people with 100%...because the problem is not the partner, the problem is inside the person who is unhappy.
In my experience, I think women are much better at filling that 20% they don’t get from their husbands. Women are emotionally stronger; we have great networks of friends that help us and we talk things out with them. The women I know accept that life and people are imperfect and they can still be very happy with a man who forgets their birthday, swears more than they like or always forgets to stop and buy the milk. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying there are not grievous reasons to leave a marriage. But leaving because your wife nags you to turn off the lights is a sign you have some internal work to do.
Applied to work, I created a draft strategic plan in May. Six months later, I still can’t seem to lock it down; my boss keeps tweaking and tweaking. In this case, 80% of the value of the strategic plan was achieved in the first 20% of the effort. And that 80% was probably “good enough”. Similarly, my team is trying to standardize a new incident reporting process on a new IT platform. Standardization is hard work – it’s inevitable that not everyone will get what they want. Right now, 80% of the obstacles on this project are coming from about 20% of the potential users – but boy are they loud. You may know these people; they are called Squeaky Wheels.
See, here’s the thing – even though the Law of the Vital Few has it’s basis in mathematics (the Pareto Principle), too many people hate math.