The 20/80 phenom: Get rid of the 20% that causes 80% of your problems

by | Mar 25, 2010 | Donald J. Claxton's Featured Posts

I'd never really thought about it, but when you really put things down on a list that cause you stress, at least in my case, I have found that there are about 20 percent of the things in my life that have been causing about 80 percent of the stress.  It's a disproportional relationship, and truth to tell, that number probably had gotten higher than 20 percent.  Maybe as high as 35 percent.  4 hour work week

At this writing, I'm on a course to cut that 35 or so percent way down, if not out completely.  Sure, there will be other things that have the potential to come along and jump back in there, but I think finally, at 44 years of age, I've come to recognize what those things are.

If you've never picked up Tim Ferriss' book, The Four-Hour Workweek, I strongly suggest you make your way to a bookstore today and do so.  Set up a list of the top two life priorities you have for today.  These are important tasks that if you don't do them, you will not have done something to advance the progress of your life today.  For today, make going and getting this book one of those two top priorities. The other part of that is start reading the book. 

I'm half way through right now and I can see all kinds of ways I can make my life better.  And already I can feel the weight of the stress I've been enduring lifting.  It's not all gone, but I'm making a plan.  (Remember the blog post from a couple of days ago when I said I was formulating three-month and six-month plans?)  And just having this plan, whether it's over the top or not, is giving me a new lease on life. It's giving me optimism and something to shoot for.  It includes things that will make me happier in life.  It includes things that will pare away that 20 percent that's causing me 80 percent of the grief in my life. 

Please.   Stop reading this now.  Go get dressed.  Leave the house.  Leave work at lunch.  Go to your bookstore.  Buy this book.  Come back to some where quiet.  Sit down. Open the book.  Start reading.  Start thinking about what's causing you 80 percent of your stress, grief, discomfort, frustration, boredom, you name it.  If it's not good, write it down.  If it's good, write that down, too.  Then start thinking about what you can do to put those 20 or so percent of things aside.   And keep reading the book because it gets even more helpful the longer you read. 

Okay, here's your top things list for today:

1.  Go get The Four-Hour Workweek and start reading it.

2. Something else that will make a profound impact on your life.

—————

Prayer

Essential work projects that bring in income

Reduce, eliminate my distractions

Find what routines I can eliminate, reduce or get someone else to do

On my list, I've begun including the dotted line above and putting everything else I want to get done in a day below that.  These are still important activities, but they're not the top two things that if I don't do them today, it will not have been a day where I made some essential progress.

I really enjoy these sorts of books.  The other important one to pick up is Gary Vaynerchuk's Crush It! and the next one I've got and I'm going to read is Bob Burg and John David Mann's Go-Givers Sell More, their follow up to The Go-Giver.

Senior citizens sexting

by | Mar 9, 2010 | Donald J. Claxton's Featured Posts

I guess those who work at KTLV in East Texas are trying to prove why they're working at a TV station in such a low-ranked market.  Tonight's feature was a story on the potential of senior citizens in the area sexting–sending sexual photos to each other–that in all parts of the world is getting people put in jail. Images

What an asinine story.  

Their story makes it sound fun to send some one a racy, risque message, photo or video.  They even quote Will Warren, 68, saying "I guess it's fun." 

Then they quote a licensed professional counselor talking about how if older people have feelings for another that they might want to "use what's available," to show it. 

But the point is, sexting is horrible and it's dangerous and this wasn't said at all in this story.  All one has to do is look at the pages of this blog to find how others' lives have been ruined by sending such photos to others, including the 41-year-old school teacher who turned herself in to police last Friday for allegedly sending such materials to a 15-year-old boy. 

The media has a responsibility to handle this subject with a lot more brains than how KLTV has done.  Sure, it may be fun to talk about how grandmas and grandpas are still having a sexual drive and how if they really wanted to, they could take a photo of themselves and send it on to someone else, but the dangers for them are just as real. 

What if granny gets ticked at the naked grandpa and decides she's going to send the photo to all the women in town she has in her cell phone?  What if she sends one to another man and he sends it on to all in town and her grand kids or her own children see it?  What if some nut is sending such photos to grandma and isn't really Grandpa Jones from the farm on the West side of town and instead is some nut who gets turned on by older women's bodies and she gets raped or attacked?

And what about all the children in East Texas who might have seen this story tonight.  "Well, heck!" they might be thinking because of this story, "If grandma and grandpa are sending neckid photos, why can't I?"

And then their granddaughter does it, the boy gets mad at her and sends her photo to all his friends in their quiet little small, East Texas town, ruining the girl's reputation until long after she's moved away, if she ever gets to. 

This was bad journalism on the part of KLTV tonight.  I hope you'll visit their site and tell them they'd better be more responsible in what they put on TV.  While grandma and grandpa might be watching, so are their grandchildren and great grandchildren, and the results of doing what they made light of tonight, might be a little more serious than grandpa getting his horse out of the barn.