Better known as the 80/20 rule, Pareto’s Law asserts that 80% of the result is dictated by 20% of the effort that’s put in.
Now sure, it’s no hard and fast science, but it’s a guideline that proves itself time and time again in principle: the majority of the effect you achieve is a result of a fraction of the total time and energy you put in.
This applies to your job hunt.
And to your salary negotiations.
And also to your self-development.
And even to your relationships, professional and personal.
I learned this first hand as a product manager. I won’t get into an auto-biography and tell the entire story here, but I will stand by that the majority of effort that I put in into an initiative seemed to always support Pareto’s point.
When I collaborated with marketing, most of the message was crafted and refined within a week; we spent a little over a month more after that to iterate and perfect it.
When I co-designed with UX/UI, the MVP of a new dashboard took us a couple days to hammer out, and a week more post-launch to iterate upon its finer details.
For any initiative you take on, take a step back, remind yourself of its end goal, then ask yourself: “what is the 20% of effort I need to put in to deliver 80% of the value my customer (or recruiter, or hiring manager) needs?”
Always start with Pareto’s Law.