The new 80-20 rule

the subtle art of relearning after you learnt it all

We all heard the 80-20 rule. Pareto’s principle think it’s called. 80% of achievements come from 20% of our activities. Or 80% of sales come from 20% of salespeople.

I want to talk about learning. Learning is great. Very important. But what’s more important than learning? Won’t give it away just yet.

So you go to all these events, the lectures, seminars, entrepreneur meetups, hear this podcast about marketing on http://www.entrepreneuronfire.com/ and etc. But then you go to another NEW lecture, NEW seminar, NEW meetup and NEW podcast. NEW NEW NEW. And the cycle repeats.

So are you learning? I am sure you THINK you are learning at the time. However, because you do not then think about what you learn, you tend to lose 80% of the knowledge gained. So the way to learn is to back to the school approach of REVISION after LEARNING. But now that we are all grown up we don’t seem to do this.

So stop being lazy. Next time you LEARN something new at a lecture, you probably already write it down. But then return to it after a week, a month, a year and CONSOLIDATE This knowledge. Otherwise, it will be a series of LEARNING rollercoasters where you always return to base level knowledge.

So 80% can be spend on attending new events, new lectures etc. But 20% should be about CONSOLIDATING/REVISING/ABSORBING what we THINK we already learnt.