Pareto's Principal applied to life.

Today is going to be a rambling day. The topic is not one of the usual topics for my blog but is designed to help all you inventors out there to evaluate your time and energies that you put into creating your inventions. I learned about the 80-20 rule in a management seminar that I took many years ago. Believe it or not it still holds true today, so what is this 80-20 rule you are asking yourself. Wikipedia describes it as follows:

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Let me give you some examples.

If you had a business 20% of your customers would generate 80% of your total sales.

Using the 80-20 rule an animal such as your family pet 20% of the time thinking in the past, 80% of the time thinking in the present. This example is over simplified I know but it gives you an idea how the 80-20 rule works.

The 80-20 rule can be broken down a little finer and in my opinion it needs to be in situations.

When a person is working at a job 20% of the time is spent retrieving past or learned knowledge, 64% of the time is applying this knowledge to the current project and 16% of the time is spent planning the next steps in the project. Hence the (16+64)= 80-20 rule.

When you are talking with your friends how much time do you spend talking about the present an the future as compared to things that happened in the past? You may be surprised at the results.

Have you ever noticed older retired people talk more about the past and very little about the present and the future?

You can not change what has happened in the past, though I have known many people through out my life who lived most of their time in the past. My one grandfather being one of them who sat in his rocking chair smoking his pipe and watching the world pass him by. He only talked of the past, his whole world was the past, what a depressing existence.

When people get wronged for whatever reason they get mad and hurt but the past is gust that the past and can not be changed. My dad held a grudge for a couple of families that when he was a paper carrier as a boy had not paid him. That is not a healthy attitude for one thing but it could not be changed so what was the purpose of fretting about it was I never could understand.

I do not always accomplish the 80-20 rule by living my life 20% in the past and 80% in the present and future but I do try. The present and the future can be changed not the past so I believe that it is more beneficial to spend my time trying to change.

For all you inventors out there the 80-20 rule should be one of the tools that you use for inventing.

Anyway that is about all that I have to say for now, keep on keeping on.