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There’s a strange phenomenon that many of us have seen in school. It involves 2 students, A and B. There’s student A. Student A is as hardworking as they come. Answers all the questions in class, does all the homework to the best of their ability, and has a pristine, luscious set of notes. Then there’s student B. Student B always arrives to class late, copies homework, and never has any stationary of his own. Yet, as far as exams are concerned student B regularly outperforms A. What a mystery. Is student B just that much smarter than A? Maybe. But the same phenomenon occurs in grammar schools as well, where the IQ of students is very similar. No. Student B did better because he consciously or unconsciously decided to work more efficiently rather than harder. His total study time is very likely to be significantly less than As but he still did better. Why? Because of the Pareto principle. What is the Pareto principle? The Pareto principle states the following: Actions and consequences are not distributed equally. Ok... What does this actually mean? Well, this principle was discovered by a man named Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto(the weird naming of the principle now makes sense right). Whilst this guy was harvesting peas in his garden and counting his yield he made an interesting observation. 80% of the healthiest peas were produced by 20% of the pea pods in his garden. He then started recognizing this pattern in other areas of life as well. Roughly speaking he found that:
20% of companies generated 80% of national profits
20% of the population owned 80% of the land
20% of the customers created 80% of the revenue for a business
In almost every sector of life, he made a similar observation. A very small amount of inputs created the majority of outputs, the rough numbers being 20 and 80. So when we say "things aren't distributed evenly" the key point being communicated is that each unit of work/time does not contribute the same amount. So if a student did 100 hours of revision and achieved 100% in his exam it does not mean that each hour contributed 1 percent to his final score. Some hours made a bigger difference and some produced a much smaller difference or maybe even no difference at all. Now using the following observation: 80% of consequences result from 20% of actions. We can examine the previous situation in a different light. Student A did as much work as he could, he was very busy writing pristine notes and completing all the homework to a high standard, even when at times the homework was not actually contributing much to his revision. In large part, he spent most of his time working on the 80% of actions that result in 20% of the consequences- completely inefficient! Student B did a lot less work, but when he did hit the books, it was effective and highly focused studying, he did exercises that produced big gains, the ones which contributed to the 80 percent yield- exam papers, active recall etc... If a piece of homework was not worth doing, as they sometimes are, he would cut corners. He would write concise and effective notes that got the job done, he didn’t waste time making them “instagramable”. He worked much less but whatever he did do was effective. Student A was busier but student B was more productive This is what we see with the hardworking who aren’t successful. They appear busy, they appear to be the most conscientious yet their results are barely mediocre. Why? Because they spent their time on the inconsequential 80% of tasks that take up a lot of time and produce little results and procrastinated on the 20% which would have made the biggest difference to their scores. So how do we apply this to the world of academia? The main idea is that the majority of results come from a small minority of inputs/actions. This means:
A very small amount of revision tasks produce the biggest change in scores- prioritise these. Make sure you do them at the start of your day and with maximum effort and attention
20% of your mistakes account for 80% of the marks which you lose: focus on fixing these mistakes first and early on. Don't procrastinate if you have a weakness in a certain topic, get it sorted
Before you start your revision think about where your current task lines up: is it an 80% result activity or a 20% activity? If it produces big gains fantastic, put all your focus and effort here but if it is less consequential don't feel too bad about putting a low amount of effort in or skipping it entirely. Like I mentioned in the example, notes tend to be the biggest time sink I see with students. They spend too much time trying to make a colorful, clean set of notes. The main value is the info so draw your diagrams freehand if it saves time, this is the 20% of work that provides the biggest value for time. All of the coloring and highlighting is part of the hard work which has little to no impact on how effective your notes will be when revising. If there is a zoom class that you feel is not adding to the big 80%, it is smart to move your brain into power-saving mode. Don't exhaust yourself on less important activities. After the lesson has concluded you can divert this brainpower to something more substantial. Now, this doesn’t mean that you don’t do work that has a lower yield. After all, to be the very best, 100% of the work needs to be completed but your main attention should be on the economical 20%. Concentration and focus are limited resources so channel them effectively!
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome on the topic.
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