Have you met Mr. Vilfredo Pareto?

#97

Hey folks 👋

How’s it going?

Welcome to Wisdom Letter #97.

This email will take less than 2 minutes of your time⌚

Today we talk about Pareto’s Principle, more popularly known as the 80/20 rule👇

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The 80/20 Rule📈

Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist. In 1896 he figured out that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people.

Today we know that it’s a rule that applies to almost every area of life, not just land ownership.

Pareto’s principle is closely linked to the mental model of Compounding.

It’s a good prioritization framework.

This week we wrote a post on Pareto’s principle.

Read it below -

• 3 Areas where the 80/20 rule works and why

• 1 aspect of life where it doesn’t work

• How you can best apply Pareto’s principle.

• And much more🚀🚀🚀

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🔗 Related

• What are mental models and why are they important

• The mental model of compounding

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🐦 Birdwatch

Morgan Housel @morganhousel

Pareto Principle: A few events drive the majority of outcomes. A corollary, Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.”

Vivek Raju @vivekraju93

The internet community Pareto principle 90% lurkers 9% contributors 1% creators

Samuel Cheong @gunnerkid

The Pareto Principle is a good predictor of Success. Your most successful projects, investments, writing come from 20% of the work. The trick is to still do the 80% to get to that 20%. That means you must be 100% all in.

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💭Something to chew on

What is your 20%?

In any one area of life, try to figure out the 20% effort that brings you 80% results.

What can you do to double down on it?

How can you reduce the other stuff that doesn’t have as much impact?

Think about it🤔

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📺 Some personal news

Last week we got featured in an online magazine called Coffee & Pens🕺💃

Do check out the interview 👉 Ayush Chaturvedi: A Book about Twitter

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🔖 Bookmarks

• Superthinking - The big book of mental models

• The Great Mental Models Volume 1 | Farnam Street

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📂 From the archives

• Today is the Euro cup and Wimbledon finals day, its a day to celebrate sport. Do read this reflective piece from one of the best Tennis players of all time, Pete Sampras 👉 Letter to My Younger Self

• Sampras’ story was featured in Wisdom Letter #22 | The Spirit of Sport. We also featured inspiring stories from Kobe Bryant, Yuvraj Singh and Cheteshwar Pujara in that post.

• This Week Last Year 👉 Metacognition: One Skill to rule them all | Wisdom Letter #45

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We want to double down on the top 20% of our readers. Help us find more folks like you🤗

See you next week.

Cheers,

Ayush & Aditi

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