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Old 11-06-2006, 07:57 AM   #11 (permalink)
Ilya
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Moscow, Russia
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I want to read so many great books, i want to watch so many great movies, i wanto to play so many great computer games.
I think, the key to solving this problem is to aquire a somewhat limiting belief that you just can't do everything during your physical lifetime.
For example, recently I've discovered TV shows that are run in US and can be ordered. I was lucky to stumble upon some good ones and watched them to keep up my English skills while having fun. And then I've discovered more shows, then more, and then I went to some site with a full list of tv shows currently running. I didn't imagine that there is so many! There is no way I can watch all of them. I would never come close. This is harsh, because I would like to. You know, I'm a knowledge guy. I would like to read all of Internet!
But we have to choose.
What helps is the improved Pareto rule. For those who do not know the Pareto or "20/80" rule states that in any human action 20 percent of effort produces 80 percent of results. This is based on statistics and is somewhat oversimplified, but still usefull. So in case of books after reading just 20% of written fiction you would know 80% about the literature. These 20% had a name, long before Pareto. They are called classics. If you read them, you would see that most of the rest of literature is secondary. You will start having deja-vus. The characters, the plots, would start to seem familiar and they are. The same is true for any body of knowledge.
You mention Covey with Urgent and Important matrix. When I was reading Covey, I skipped this topic altogether, because I've met it before. It was used by Eisenhower or Churchill during WWII. I might have missed Covey's personal take on the problem, but I would expect to be 80% efficient in using this principle.
But you can go even further. You can change this rule into 90/10 rule or even to 99/1. This is the same rule, but taken to the extreme. For example it is true for the wealth distribution. A very few people, who actually make up less then 10 percent of the world population own more then 90 percent of world wealth. When learning the language, knowing just a hundred of words would solve 99 percent of your communication needs.
This is amazing but true, because the recent information explosion was mainly noise which can be easily filtered out. It is easy to create junk, so it happens more often.
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