The 80/20 rule is something used in business a lot, and it seems to hold true a lot. 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers. 80% of your customer service problems come from 20% of your customers. 80% of your customers use only 20% of your product’s features. 80% of your time is spent doing the most boring 20% of your tasks.
It’s also expressed as a 90/10 rule, with the same general flavor– the majority of what you do is centered on the minority. I won’t go into the theory and mind-wrangling behind this, or what you can do about it (at least, not today), but I read another 80/20 rule that was very clever the other day, and it had to do with blogging and twitter:
80% Idea, 20% Life.
The concept is that 80% of your posts should provoke thought in your readers, while 20% of them can be posts about your personal life.
Looking at my blog, I see that I’m 80/20 in the wrong direction– 80% Life and 20% Idea. This is not good, and I suspect the solution is to increase the amount of thought provocation resulting from my Life. Two other great Stephanies, StefiSpice and Yarn Harlot do this with grace and aplomb, and I hope someday to grow up and become either one of them.