I have read a lot about it and I just still don’t understand it. I feel incredibly stupid whenever I see it come up somewhere and I know it’s name and I know that I’ve read about it, but I still don’t know what it is.
This has gone on for almost a year now.
Help.
In: Other
In most places, 20% of something will account to 80% of usage.
For instance, 20% of the English words will make up 80% of the English language.
And this is followed in almost every language.
Another example is 20% of people will have 80% of the total money in the world.
[The Zipf Mystery](https://youtu.be/fCn8zs912OE) by Vsauce is an amazing video about this.
It’s kind of crazy when you think how mathematically accurate this is in almost every language.
This is related to time management and prioritization. If you are solving issues, spend your time on issues that happen 80% of the time and ignore issues that happen only 20% of the time.
In rugby football league, if the attacking team’s player in possession is behind his 80 metre line and kicks the ball forward into a legal area of play and it then bounces out of play in the sidelines past the opponent’s 20 metre line, then the attacking team are awarded a tap restart where the ball went out of play… Or something like that!
Its a little like murphys law. Like 80% of your problems come from 20% of you’re processes.
Or 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers. Most of them don’t complain much, but the ones who do complain a lot.
80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Look at a workplace. 80% of the work gets done by the same 20% of the people.