What is the 80/20 rule and why does it work?
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‘The 80/20 rule’ is less a rule and more an observed trend. It states that when you divide things in an approximate half, you can often observe an 80% distribution of a related statistic on one half, and 20% on the other.
One example is Chinese land area, where approximately 80% of their inhabitants live in the eastern half of the country, and 20% in the west.
The 80/20 rule states that 80% of the work will take 20% of the time, and the remaining 20% of the work, will take 80% of the time.
This is to illustrate both that, when you get close to finishing a project, it is the finer details that end up bogging you down. Also when you feel like you are half way through a project, you are usually nowhere near it.
The 80/20 rule helps project planners to figure out the true deadline.
The 80/20 rule is that 80% of the time and effort of a job or task goes into the last 20% of finishing it. Or looking at it from the other direction, it only takes 20% of the total effort to get you 80% of the way to the finish line.
It’s not a measurable, scientific truth, but it’s good shorthand for time / project management. It’s just a reminder that the devil is in the details — You might be able put a first draft together pretty quickly, something that gives you a sense of what the finished product is going to look like, but your work is still just getting started at that point.
I like to imagine it like sculpting a statue from a solid block. Early on you’re carving big chunks out at once, and you can start to see the shape of the figure. But at the end, you’re zoomed way in on one detail, putting in a ton of effort just to carve out individual eyebrow hairs or something. The same is basically true of any task — whether it’s cleaning a house, developing a video game, writing a book, or whatever.
Some people have explained what it is, here is a shot at why it works:
First, a project can be divided into many different tasks. Each task requires some amount of effort, and contributes some amount of completedness to the project.
At the beginning of the project, 0% of the total effort has been done, and 0% of the total completedness of the project is done. At the end, 100% of the total effort has been done and 100% of the total completedness has been done (in both cases, percentages are out of what actually was done, not out of what was planned). As the project goes from the first state to the second, there will reach a point when the two percentages add up to 100%
In general, the earlier tasks tend to be more impactful for the effort they take, while the later tasks tend to be less impactful*. This means that the point where effort+completedness=100% will usually be somewhere between 50:50 and 100:0. 80:20 is a nice round midpoint.
*When this is not the case, it usually results in the project failing
There’s other examples of 80/20 rules as well. Usually to do with the behavior of individuals at the extreme of a bell curve as a subset of a group.
80% of alcohol is consumed by the 20% of people that drink the most
80% of medical costs (US) is incurred by the 20,% of people that consume the most medical services.
I bet 80% of Wikipedia edits are made by the 20% most active users.
80% of political yard signs are posted by 20% most politically active people (I made this up, but would bet $1 it’s true).
80% of reddit comments made by 20% of users? Also would bet $1 this is true.
I’m sure there are other examples.
Also 20% of the people do 80% of the work. 20% of the salesmen make 80% of the sales.
I suspect that it “works” at least partly because if our statistic is anywhere near 20% or 80%, we approximate it to one of those figures.
It’s not really a rule per se. It’s a pattern that we observe is certain systems. It’s not always exactly 80-20, and it’s not always true, but it’s a decent approximation of the fact that often times most of the consequences come from a minority of causes.
For example, 20% of all existing words are used in 80% of speech. So, a small number of common words like “the”, “house”, “please”, go”, “tomorrow” are used all the time. And there’s a bunch of words like “abjure”, “cacophony”, “serendipity”, “scrumptious” that get used very rarely.
Another example, 20% of people hold 80% of the wealth. So, you’ve got a minority of billionaires and millionaires that own most of the money in the world.
Or, did you ever do a school group project? If there’s a group of 5 students doing the same project, there’s always that one dude who does most of the work, others just drag along.
80% of listened songs are created by 20% of authors. So, you’ve got a small number of popular musicians that get played all the time on radios, and a lot of unpopular musicians who’s songs almost never (if ever) get played.
Or another example – 20% of work takes you 80% of the way to the final result. Let’s say you’re drawing [a house](https://i.etsystatic.com/6620142/r/il/ec583b/346222713/il_fullxfull.346222713.jpg). It takes you 30 minutes to make a full drawing. But, in the first 5 minutes, you’ll be able to draw a [rough outline](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSfkRLwKNBBb8DJnMixIfvY7aVXKnIuC8JgQg&usqp=CAU) that already looks much like a house. So, in our first 20% of work, you’ve drawn pretty much the entire house, and the next 25 minutes are spent on details like shading, coloring, reflections, background, textures.
In short, 80-20 “rule” is a reflection of the fact that life isn’t fair and that things aren’t equally distributed. Certain things are more useful than others. Certain things need more time than others. Rich get richer.
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