20% of tasks take up about 80% of your time. There are some things that give you more bang for your buck. Put in a dollar and you’ll get back two. Similarly, there are tasks that you can spend too much time on. Put in a dollar and get back a quarter. You aren’t going to make as much relative progress by putting your time in. Classic Pareto Principle.
This is very true of the general things you do on a project. There are 4 thresholds for a project to be “complete”:
- 50% mark – complete with most work, the recommendations are fairly clear but there’s a number of loose ends to tie up.
- 80% mark – analysis and evaluation is complete but the final report isn’t complete and the details haven’t all be filled in.
- 95% mark – everything is done except for the third and final review with lots of critical eyes.
- 100% mark – the land even perfectionists rarely reach.
Many hit the 50% mark and call it done. For most projects or activities that’s too soon. Too many gaps still remain even if the certainty level is there. Just like too many strive for 95+% on everything they do. The time to get from 80% to 95% can be as much as going from 0 to 80%. For a lot of things that’s an appropriate trade-off. But for just as many it can be overkill.
100% – well that’s a topic for another day.
When you kick off a project, activity or just something you want to work on, do you decide up front what level of effort the final mark will really need?