Daily Dose 59: 80/20 Principle 2

If the good news about the 80/20 principle is we can expect major results for reasonable effort, what other news do we need to hear? As with most topics, time spent considering the balance points is usually time well spent.

The other side of the 80/20 principle is if we can accomplish 80 percent of result with 20 percent of input, then doubling or tripling input will not, indeed cannot double or triple result. We already know about this, the law of diminishing returns.

Finding the Effort vs Result Balance Point

For stewarding our time this translates into modest input to prioritize well and coordinate processes will garner us a large bounty of found time. But beyond a certain point, substantially increasing our effort cannot bring an equal increase in well-apportioned time.

For most of our priorities, this means we should find a comfortable balance between effort and result, and resist (perfectionists, are you listening?) mistaken pressures from ourselves or others to spend intense input for only modest gains in priorities that are not the Lord’s call to us for extraordinary effort.

Rest assured, however, that the Lord can (and usually does) have areas and priorities for each of us, where He asks for doubled input, effort, or involvement, regardless of how the results turn out.

Effective stewardship is built on these balance points:

1) rightly discerning the life areas where the Lord expects more input than normal from us. Serious believers are all familiar with this realm of living. It’s called ministry sacrifice. Faith knows He can bless a hundredfold if He desires.

2) accurately identifying life areas where reasonable effort is enough. Both Mary and Martha can sit, and are content to sit when this balance point is in place. Here the “sacrifice” means surrendering superficial expectations and standards in prideful priorities to invest in the less self-exalting master priorities the Lord wants addressed.

3) correctly assessing how much “effort” is twenty percent. You know when starting from zero, even the smallest amount of effort invested in a new and unfamiliar area seems massive. We must recognize the difference between initial skill learning effort and maintenance effort.

4) controlling expectations of results for the effort we invest. Expectations for results we want to see often outrun our perception of how much effort we have invested. The common advice to leave results with the Lord and concentrate on fulfilling the responsibilities and priorities He has for us, helps protect us in this area.

Isn’t it exciting that something from abstract math can provide us such a practical time assessment tool?