Actually, I didn’t know about the 80/20 principle until I read this article. At first, it was a little difficult to apply it to my daily life.
But the sixth paragraph of the article,
— “we try to do everything but none of it particularly well” — actually reminded me of my first TOEIC test about 10 years ago.
September 2015 was exactly when I decided to start learning English again for the first time in nearly 30 years.
Honestly, I had no idea where to start from, or what to do. Because I had forgotten most of my vocabulary and grammar.
Then, I chose the TOEIC because it was very popular among working adults, and since there’s no pass or fail, I thought it would be a good way to measure my progress.
But when I actually looked into it, there were just too many things to study, and I felt completely overwhelmed.
So I decided to focus only on the Listening section and gave up on the rest. From the day I applied for the test until the test day, I only practiced listening. On the exam day, I even filled in all the Reading answers randomly, just by guessing. Surprisingly, it worked! My Listening score was much higher than I expected for a first timer.
Of course, the Reading part was a disaster... Now that I think about it, maybe that was kind of the 80/20 principle.
Focusing on one section gave me better results than trying to cover everything at once.
But of course this strategy is useful only when your priority is not getting the highest total scores.
By the way, one of my favorite examples of the 80/20 rule is the idea that you wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time.
This totally sounded like me! I often realize it when I look at my closet. I have plenty of clothes, but I always end up wearing just a few outfits, even though I like many of the others. Maybe it’s because those few clothes are more comfortable and easy to wash.
And when I buy new clothes, I often think, "ll save this outfit for a special outings,".
But then that special occasion actually doesn’t come so often.
I know I could have more space if I threw away 70 or 80 percent of the clothes I rarely wear, but it’s surprisingly difficult to do that. I don’t really know why.
And the another example I thought of is that in a book, maybe 20% of the pages contain 80% of the most important information.
I think this is especially true for self-help books. They often have a lot of valuable stories, and tips to improve your lives, but sometimes I feel like they just repeat the same ideas using different examples or expressions.
The same goes for some YouTube videos, especially the ones that give advice or useful information. I often feel like they take forever to get to the point. Sometimes I think, if they just showed the key 20% of the content, I could understand the main idea much faster.
And lastly, I need to say one more thing that probably applies to many people.
Social media is definitely part of the “wasted 80%” of your time!
