All that effort, unhappy with the outcomes
Sunday, August 11, 2019 at 10:24PM 
On the topic of ‘maximising’, this week’s posts highlight the damaging effects of striving for more, better, perfect.
Maximising isn’t as good as it sounds. It means we put in extreme, herculean efforts trying to make things better, tick all the boxes, cover all the bases (and other metaphors!) to cover every question, topic or query. We work back late, take work home, stay up late, do ‘all nighters’, come in early and put other priorities aside to focus on doing still more on this task or project.
We expend excess time and energy. Excess. More than is required. We know it’s not required because of economic and mathematical laws and principles like the Pareto Effect (the 80/20 rule) and the Law of Diminishing Returns.
Effort is not equal. Some effort is useful, giving us a good return and progress; some of our effort ends up being a total waste of time!
And then ... maximisers don’t tend to be as happy with the outcomes as if they'd called ’time’ sooner on a task. It's a big 'no' to maximising
Do you apply the 80/20 rule in your world (20% effort brings 80% of the reward)?
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