Brain Food: The 98/2 Rule

The most practical skill you can learn is working smarter. But here's what nobody tells you about working smarter: it often looks like you're working slower.

A programmer might spend 20 hours wrestling with a difficult algorithm, then have an insight in the shower that solves it in 10 lines of code. Those 20 hours weren't wasted—they were necessary

What is your 20 percent that if you went all-in on, you’d become 10x more valuable and impactful? What are the few things you do and the few people you work with that produce most of your success and excitement? What is your 80 percent that is keeping you grinding away, and ultimately a distraction for your biggest future jumps?

Pareto Principle, commonly known as the 80/20 rule. For the history buffs: Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was an Italian economist who studied the distribution of wealth in Italy in the late 1800s. He discovered that 20 percent of the Italian population owned 80 percent of the land. Then he looked at his garden and observed that 20 percent of the