80 20 Principle For Money And Life
Recently, I picked up Timothy Ferriss’s book “The 4 Hour WorkWeek”. I’m sure you would have heard about this book. It is one of the best sellers around. If you have not, you will get some hint from its tagline, which say, “escaping the 9 to 5 and be a new rich.”
While the book is great in many areas, there are some areas you need to be careful about. I almost got sucked in.
I’ve written about using your time effectively and about whether you should do something just because everyone is doing it. So back to the book, the great thing about the 4HWW is there are some tips everyone can use to be more effective.
Tips that are worth reminders as we start 2010 include:-
- the 80 20 principle which is more that proven, that says “80% of any outcome comes from 20% of the effect” or also know as the Pareto principle
- Parkinson’s law (no not Parkinson’s disease) which says any task expends to fill the time allocated to complete it (this is a great one)
- to how to reduce time interruptions from co worker
- getting on a low info diet
plus many more. One of my favorite is the tip on avoiding or reducing meetings. That alone would be worth the price of the book. I’ve applied some of what I read to my own life albeit not zapping bad habits like multitasking and I would say it helps. I would certainly recommend you get a copy of this book.
On the other hand, here comes the “con” part. If you are not careful, you can get sucked into thinking you want to live like Tim Ferriss. Maybe that’s just me. I have a tendency to very quickly get convinced of ideas that moves against the popular grain.
Anyhoo, if you have found your purpose for your life, I found that the book can distract a person from that goal if applied incorrectly. Applied correctly, it will help you a ton.
One last word and I believe this is crucial point as made in the book as well as my own observation. The present believes about retirement. Even before I read the book, I already noticed that people live quite long after retirement. And if you want to do something, why not do something productive and you can still earn money after you retire. Perhaps be an advisor or consultants of sorts from your previous working experience. There are plenty of opportunities.
Personally, I can’t imagine sitting at home all day and do nothing but watch TV and surf the net. In the book, Tim talks about breaking up retirements into smaller chucks spread out over the years instead of working the best years of your life and then, when you are too old to walk, then only to visit places and see the world. I think this point is very valid. It also affects how you save money for your retirement.
I would suggest that while you want to put aside money for retirement IF you really can’t or don’t want to work (and just want to watch TV all day), you should also develop some skills and hobbies now that help you pay some bills later on.
If you are an avid gardener, how about have a class on teaching city dwellers how to garden up above in their condominiums. If you are good at photography, you can teach beginners. There are those who really don’t know basic stuff like shutter speed and f-stop. You need not be that great expert to teach the basics. Think about it and see if you can do this over the course of 2010.
Here is another article I wrote about lateral thinking for income.
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4 comments
I read the book too Ed & I’m don’t have great things to say about it. One or 2 points are ok, but some of the stuff there borders on fantasy. Eg is creating an online muse. If you find a profitable niche, others will find it soon enough.
Hey Ed,
I browsed through the book, found the 1st part helpful since I multitask just too much & the thing with reducing meetings. I have to say be careful about the suggestions in the later part.
In today worlds, your reputation is very important. If people finds that you break rule just for your gain, people will know. Some rules are ok to break like being creative. But in sports and for sportsmanship, tricks like dehydration to go to a lower weight class is crap.
Imagine if you have kids and your kids see what you do? We are going to end up with kids that what to do things their way All the time.
@ Smith You r right . Without a “barrier” of some sort i.e. difficulty for competitors to enter the market, then your biz can evaporate over night
@Kevin. Lots of sports fall into disrepute cos by wining at all cost, bending rules etc
I love the part about reducing meetings! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in meetings inwardly stewing because there was so much productive work left undone to sit and listen to some overpaid bozo rattle on about this or that.
Other things said also hit the mark. The 80-20 rule applies is most cases. But, again, Ed, you’re right about warning people not to get carried away by wishful thinking. Just because some author or marketer has become rich on 4-hour weeks doesn’t mean you’re going to. And believe me, even those who manage 4 hours a week now certainly didn’t do so at the outset.
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