The rule of
80/20 is best understood after the law of attraction.
The law of attraction is another great law that explains how
larger or smaller groups, alliances and enterprises are formed in society.
Andrew Carnegie when teaching his wisdom to Napoleon Hill called it Master Mind
principle and explained it as "An alliance of two or more minds, working
together in perfect harmony, for the attainment of a definite purpose."
Two persons A, and B working and focusing together towards a goal G , act
attractively to a third person C who is also interested in the same goal G. It
is the type of consciousness , habits "sympathetic resonance"
"and "heat" that persons A, B create which makes the vibrations
and rhythms of a person C with similar consciousness and interests to be
attracted to A, and B so as to form a group A,B,C and so on. It is known in
social psychology that when two girls are room mates their menstruation periods
tune as if by "sympathetic resonance" to have the same phase. It is a
law similar to the law of universal attraction of Newton with which stars and
planets are formed. Very relevant to this law is also the Pareto or power
distribution law of 80/20, that e.g. for the stars states that more than 80% of
the star plasma mass is found in less than 20% of the stars in the galaxy.
Similarly more than 80% of the population in a country is found in less than
20% of the towns, more than 80% of the assets in the private sector are found
in less than 20% of the enterprises, and more than 80% of the internet pages
are found in less than 20% of the sites. The power distribution law of 80/20
has been proved mathematically to hold under the hypothesis of an exponentially
evolving population if it is starting with a uniform random distribution. In
personal development we may watch this law in action all around us. You start thinking
of a friend and by "coincidence" the phone is ringing with him on the
other end. Happy people seem to attract happy people, rich people attract rich
people etc. People that take advantage of this law, talk about
"serendipity" and are often called lucky. Many people hold themselves
back in personal development because they do not know how to get from where
they are to where they want to go. But because of this law, it is not necessary
to have all the answers before you begin. The law of attraction provides
leverage to go on.
Some more interesting applications of the rule of 80/20 are:
More than 80% of the orders in a restaurant come from less
than 20% of the menu selections.
More than 80% of the staff problems in an enterprise come
from less than 20% of its employees.
More than 80% of the value of our daily activities comes from
less than 20% of our daily tasks.
More than 80% of the lecture in a seminar of personal
development is proved after sufficient time that it was essentially addressed
to less than 20% of the audience.
The latter is a very interesting feature of standard personal
development material, books and mp3's. Because of this property of addressing
eventually to the minority of the audience or readers rather than the majority,
there are the well known dangers of books of wisdom. I believe that this is not
always universal there are books or seminars of personal development that may
be designed so that they are eventually addressed to the majority of the
audience rather that to the minority. Usually strongly stimulating seminars (of
the type "you can do it" ) address to the minority, while soothing
seminars (of the type it does not matter, the present is important you are OK)
address to the majority of the audience.
We must not forget nevertheless that a physical law, if not appropriated by the
human intervention may make the society a jungle. It is only though decreased financial
differences that the society is healthy and happy. And this of course means
similar levels of development of its citizens. Here is a relevant video:http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/el/richard_wilkinson.html
