I’m writing this in Markdown and using Pandoc to convert it to HTML. Granted, it doesn’t have the same “style” or whatever you want to call it as the rest of my website, but in the interest of transparency, I’m going demonstrate exactly what I’m capable of as of August 2nd, 2021. Besides, it’s significantly less time consuming to write in Markdown and convert to HTML than it is to make a copy of the generic blog page I’d adapted from my free website template (it’s the Massively template from HTML5UP ).
I’ve switched to this workflow in spite of the ugliness because what matters are my words and how many I produce (and of course, how well). I set aside (ideally) an hour every day to write. I don’t want to spend more than ten minutes max to fiddling with how those words look and all that crap. If an original Dickinson poem were written on the back of a napkin, it would still be worth millions.
I’ve been listening to this podcast called Sweaty Startup, which introduced me to the idea of the Pareto Principle. The idea is pretty simple:
20 percent of the causes result in 80 percent of the outcomes
Let’s just take this for granted (which I tend to do with most things anyways, for better or worse.)
I’m awake for sixteen hours a day. That means that 20 percent (one fifth) of those hours are responsible for 80 percent (four fifths) of my productivity.
One fifth of sixteen is roughly three and a half hours. If you think about that, that’s kind of crazy. That means that what I do in those three and a half hours are crucial. Actually, now that I think about it, using the domain of my every waking moment (sixteen hours) means the outcome I’m referring to is the quality of my life - or perhaps even more simply, my life in general.
I’m typing out loud here, so bear with me. Let me fiddle with Markdown’s list syntax to jot down some key points I’m considering:
That last point is what I was trying to get at but couldn’t figure out how to word. What I care about is applying Pareto’s Principle. So let’s make a quick (I only have twenty min left) lab out of this:
#Applying Pareto’s Principle to a Goal
This should take ten to twenty minutes. Actually, probably more like ten since you don’t have to write anything up. Let me list some of my goals and I’ll pick one:
Goals (as of Aug 2nd 2021):
The list can (and will, and should) go on forever. I’m twenty-five years old (soon to be twenty-six). I’ve effectively lived out a third of my life, assuming all goes well. I can’t find the quote right now, but an ancient Indian spiritual teacher said he lived as if a sword was constantly hanging above him - no doubt a reference (or paraphrase?) of the Sword of Damocles, which I won’t get into now. It’s a good reminder of the importance of time, which brings me back to the Pareto Principle and the purpose of this experiment.
I’m going to take the easy (and relevant) goal: become a better writer.
Goal: Become a better writer
Okay. Let’s say I have an hour a day to write. That means that 20% of the hour I set aside is responsible for 80% of the quality of my writing.
.2 x 60 minutes = 12 minutes.
12 minutes!!!!! Really??? That seems wild to me. Let’s work with that, though. There are two ways we can consider those twelve minutes:
Let’s go with the first notion, since that’s more fun to consider. If I break down my general workflow for the hour, it looks like this:
The general theme is that, like my dad (not his fault, of course), I tend to be more concerned with finding the optimal way of doing something instead of actually doing it. So let’s take the Pareto principle a little further:
If twelve of the sixty minutes I set aside to write are producing the best ideas or whatever (that’s another interesting thing to consider: classifying the outcomes as good/acceptable/bad), then what’s happening with the other forty-eight? This brings us back to how to consider those twelve minutes. I see both a cycle (write/distracted/rally/repeat) and a depreciating return as I lose focus over the course of the hour. So I would argue that the twelve minutes are perhaps split into chunks.
Oh man. There’s the hour. Welp, time to post this up as is. What’s the moral of the story, kids? We’re all going to die and we waste 80% of our time and effort on 20% of the outcome.
Just kidding :)