80-20 the 80-20

At any moment, each of us could write down 100 things that need to get done.

Every one of them is a micro-stress that requires energy to be maintained in the recesses of the mind. Since it is near impossible to accomplish everything on such a list and holding on to them takes up our bandwidth it’s worth the effort to prioritize the list in order of impact.

The question to ask is:

By completing which task do all other tasks become easier or unnecessary?

A popular concept of productivity is Pareto’s Principle (aka 80-20 Principle). This means of the 100 things that could get done, twenty of them will produce 80% of the results we want.

If we repeat this for the subsequent twenty tasks, we see that 20% of twenty is four.

20% of four is…

~1

One task to influence the whole list.

One action. One call. One email. One conversation. One night of sleep. One gallon of water. One day of fasting. One apology. One request. One meditation. One class. One habit. One question. One answer.

One cause. Many effects.

The short-term effect of applying this process is a shorter list. The alchemy of applying this process over time transforms the inner dialogue from “I could-do and therefore I could be…” into

“I am doing and therefore I am...”