Scientific Definition
20% of your activity produces 80% of the result. Find it. Cut the rest.
Plain-English Definition
20% of your activity produces 80% of the result. Find it. Cut the rest.
Feynman Explanation
Most productivity is performance art for an audience of one.
Core Principle
20% of your activity produces 80% of the result. Find it. Cut the rest.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
20% of your activity produces 80% of the result. Find it. Cut the rest.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Portfolio pruning and effort reallocation.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Most productivity is performance art for an audience of one.
Examples
- Pareto's original income distribution observation, extended to nearly every domain.
- Portfolio pruning and effort reallocation.
Pending editorial review.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Quarterly: list the 5 activities that drove all the wins. Double them. Stop the rest.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Quarterly: list the 5 activities that drove all the wins. Double them. Stop the rest.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
How will I feel about this in 10 minutes / 10 months / 10 years?
Inattention or forgetfulness caused by low attention, hyperfocus, or distraction.
Forgetting to compare an offer with the next-best alternative.
Outcomes that could have happened but did not.
Overthinking a situation so that decision-making stalls.
The first number on the table silently sets the range for every number after it.
Tversky & Kahneman's classic: identical outcomes flip from 'risk averse' to 'risk seeking' when framed as lives saved vs. lives lost.
Our perception is shaped by what we selectively pay attention to.
Favoring suggestions from automated systems over conflicting human judgment.
A color appears different depending on adjacent colors.
Decisions are constrained by available information, cognitive limits, and time.
The ability to focus on one voice in a noisy environment.