Recently I had occasion to discuss two issues with a friend of mine.
The first was about not passing bowels everyday and the second was about not taking the garbage out everyday. She is a perfectionist and insisted that both were equally important to her and both had to be addressed.
I believed that bowels was a much more severe issue while the garbage was a less severe issue. The first was Vital while the second was Desirable. The specific issues were that bowels were not passed for the third consecutive day while garbage wasn't taken out on that particular day. So you can see where I was coming from.
And if one didn't differentiate between the two, then one might not do justice to the Vital because one was busy with the Desirable. Just old fashioned theory. While my friend believed that every "drop" was important and that small drops etc.
Now comes the twist. If I am not competent to address the bowel issue I might focus only on taking the garbage out and since I consider both issues to be equally important, I think I was 50% efficient (fixed garbage but didn't address bowels).
Now if we don't understand the relative importance of moving bowels and garbage (let's consider it metaphorically and not literally), we end up focusing on what we like to or can easily do than on what is crucial. This includes a vast array of behaviors such as praying, instead of studying, before an exam (I had a good friend in school who did this. Since he was mentally weak, he visited temples instead of studying).
The classic 80-20 rules tries to identify the 20% things that cause 80% of damage and hence address those 20% issues no matter how difficult.
The 20-80 rule identifies those issues which are easy to address, the low hanging fruits in technical parlance, and mentally claim that they fixed issues that were as important as any others.
Take the garbage out and say "Neatliness is next to Godliness". Kudos to oneself.
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