Why? Because the majority is always wrong.
In most cases majority/minority is an extreme proportional inequality: 98-99% to 1~2%
The other extreme is: 90% to 10%, meaning: the “good, productive, true” is never higher than 10%.
There was an Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) who noticed this pattern: that the distribution of income, brain, etc. is not even, not equal, but grossly unequal.
They call this the Pareto’s Principle or the 80-20 principle, but if you are a stickler for precision, like I am, you will know that my numbers are closer to how it is than 80-20.
The Pareto Principle, the way it is normally said, says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. Said in another way: 20% of your efforts produce 80% of the results… in any and all endeavors
Whatever that distribution is, you can see that you can side with the small minority and reap the huge rewards.
But… There is a big but.
I am not a perfectionist.
I shoot to do 80% of things, and be done with them.
But… whenever I tell this to anyone, it becomes quickly apparent that their 100% and my 100% aren’t the same… not even close.
Your perfection can be someone’s 20%, and it often is.
It is a matter of skills, a matter of your cone of vision, and a matter of your standards.
I have high standards. I was born that way. Doing complete and thorough work is second nature to me.
Now… Pareto’s Principle also says that no matter what part of the whole we examine, the proportions are always the same, for the same distribution of matter.
This can be looked at the way the New Testament says: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” here is another translation: I like the word “faithful” “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
This is another way of saying: how you do anything is how you do everything.
This comes up in my work of coaching people a lot.
People complain about not having time… but the time they have they waste.
I don’t recommend someone increases their workload, quit their jobs, start a new project, until they have learned to work with a little… faithfully.
Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Step by step you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. But you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day. At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve.
— Charlie Munger
If this and the bible quote is confronting to you, you can be sure you belong to the 98-99% of people who never amount to much.
No one succeeds with big things who wasn’t successful with small things.
Yet most people look at small things with disdain…
Doing your homework. Keeping your promises. Doing your reading… re-read if you notice you didn’t pay attention.
If you never did the color exercise to its full power, to the place where you could replace the color with a virtue, or with a pattern, or with a question you wanted answered, you are in the 98-99%.
No escaping it.
If you wait for clients to come to you, if you hope, wish, but not do, or not do fully… the good life will escape you.
And you’ll look back at your life with regret.
