The 80/20 Principle

I read The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less by Richard Koch a couple of months ago, and wanted to memorialize some of my notes here.

Here’s the big picture takeaway:

You guessed it, you can get 80% of the value of this book by reading 20% of it.

That said, it’s still a great book. I found the author’s insights into the many ways humans can be ineffective to be useful, and the basic premise of the book is gold (the idea that 80% of the value of something comes from 20% of the effort).

An interesting side topic came up late in the book: a tangent on, essentially, the law of attraction and the power of the subconscious mind. It was all very Napoleon Hill and Think and Grow Rich. While something of a non sequitur, the similarities between the two authors’ experiences were striking.

In one example Koch describes instructing his subconscious mind to wake him up at a specific time, not needing an alarm clock. He invited the reader to try it. So I did. And it worked. Bang on, within minutes, for a few days running until I got bored of trying. It was honestly a little eerie.

Anyway, it reinforced my confidence that both Koch and Hill are onto something and meshes with my own experience even outside of the subconscious alarm clock experiment.

All in all a good read and well worth the effort.