Barnabas Notes

This is the second post in a series of three. In the first I introduced the 80-20 principle. In this post I’m going to look at how there is a significant psychological benefit of being done.

A reminder that 80-20 is often applied to a set of things, and I’m interested in applying it to just one thing.

First off, I want to be clear that I know you can’t apply 80-20 to everything. The best example I have is a steak. If you want your steak medium and the chef cooks it to 20 percent of medium you have a rare if not still mooing steak. There are some things that you have to do 100 percent of the work for them to have value.

I was actually mowing my lawn when the thought for this series came to me. Our lawn is mostly on the side of the house. If you’ve mowed grass before you know that the easiest thing to mow is a rectangle with no obstacles.

Well our yard has a couple of things that make it not ideal.

First off, there are six trees (five living and one dead). You read that right in our quarter acre there are six trees. Also the way our driveway cuts into our back-yard and where two of the trees are planted creates something like a triangle for one part of the yard.

I’ve figured out how to divide the yard into three rectangles. Cutting these three rectangles takes a bit more than 20 percent of the time but accounts for about 90 percent of our grass. A good example of the 80-20 principle in action.

However, the problem is with mowing your lawn the benefit isn’t directly tied to the number of blades of grass you cut. Part of the reason I’m cutting my grass is so the neighbors don’t think I’m a slouch.

And not only my neighbors. When it’s my turn to cut the grass if I don’t finish it my wife is going to be none to pleased.

Part of the 80-20 principle is to change your thinking that “done” isn’t as valuable as you think it is. However, the lawn example shows a societal problem that even if you are applying the 80-20 principle, the people around may just think your lazy.

Of course you could say f-em, but that doesn’t seem like it would work for very long.

That’s where we are headed next Tuesday folks, how do you sell people on the 80-20 principle.