Friday, December 14, 2012

The Principle Of 80% To Prevent Unnecessary Stress

This is a principle I found quite helpful when applied to any type of task or goal you're trying to achieve.

It has helped me to reduce my perfectionism.

Principle: Try and aim for completing only 80% of your imagined initial task / aim / goal.

For example,

  • If you plan to study for a solid 30 minutes, try and study for only 80% of that time i.e. 24 minutes.

  • If you plan to run for 30 minutes, try and run for only 80% of that time i.e. 24 minutes.

  • If you plan to read 10 pages of a certain book, try and read only 8 pages (80%).

  • If you plan to write a blog post, try and write only 80% of the content you initially aimed for.

Deliberately lowering the bar of expectation greatly reduces the stress because it's a lot easier to achieve only 80% of the task / aim / goal imagined.

Otherwise, you'd feel uneasy (especially if you're a perfectionist) because you feel the task hasn't been completed or completed to your satisfaction.

For example, the principle also applies to the quality of the works you produced. Deliberately aim for 80% of the imagined quality of your work.

So after you produce a work / works, you feel satisfied rather than feel uneasy and unsatisfied and increase your stress levels.

I feel that the quality of this blog post is about 80% of what I imagined. So I am quite satisfied. :-)


P.S.
This principle also helps with procrastination as well.

One of the reasons why people procrastinate is because they think that unless they're well prepared and ready or feel just right to begin a task, they won't even start the task they want accomplished.

If you feel only 80% motivated, and think you could only accomplish 80% of the task if you started, you're in the right state to begin the task.

More often than not, actually you accomplish more than you imagined you could because the momentum builds up once you start the task.

Principle: Try and aim for completing only 80% of your imagined initial task / aim / goal.

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