I'm done half-assing everything

Anyone who knows me knows that I live by the 80/20 rule, one that states that 80% of results come from 20% of the effort. 

It’s honestly helped me a lot at university. I feel like I put in a fraction of the work that my peers do and still get decent grades. 

In my business, it means that I can take on more projects, try out new things and still have resources left to run everything I already have going on. 

There’s just one problem with this particular rule. No matter what, if you want to achieve spectacular things, you have to put in spectacular effort. And if you’re living 80/20, nothing ever really gets your 100%.

I haven’t seen a problem with this in the past. I thought it was about quantity, not quality. Doing more and doing it all just good enough.

I’m learning more and more that the world is not all that black and white. 80/20 thinking got me very far coasting in university, but that won’t cut it in everything I do, like these newsletters. I want to deliver you guys nothing less than excellence every week and 20% effort can’t get me there.

Let’s look at another example of this. Last year, I wanted to challenge myself to practice consistency and content creation, so I created a TikTok every single day. The issue was that I created a 20% effort video every day and subsequently, the account never ended up going anywhere. 

Now, I’m not saying all this to simply to deter you from using the 80/20 rule. If this is the first time you’re hearing of it, try it out! It’s (still) one of my favourite productivity “hacks”.

But I do think you should find your special . Use it where you need, but give more of yourself to your commitments when you can. Good enough is good enough, but it’ll never be better than your best.