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Theres this thing called "the 80/20 rule". Story time: My dad used to work at Sainsbury's (big UK supermarket chain). One day the CEO (Lord Sainsbury I think

Theres this thing called "the 80/20 rule". Story time: My dad used to work at Sainsbury's (big UK supermarket chain). One day the CEO (Lord Sainsbury I think he said it was) popped over to his desk. "<Dad's name>, you do great work. I know I can always count on you." "But... You spend so much effort on details that don't end up being important. The first 80% of your work takes as long as the last 20%." "The thing is, that first 80% is more usually good enough for what we need. Why don't you try and hit 80% and then wait and see if we need that last 20% next time? It might save you some time." Caveat - I may have made the name up. But it quite often works in practice.

oigursh 6y ago
He's asking your dad not to finish any work? This is really hard to apply to development or, say, mowing the lawn.
- abiogenesis 6y ago
  It is applicable to most things. You can omit some bells and whistles while doing development, or skip edging after mowing the lawn.
- dijksterhuis 6y ago
  No, he asked him to do 80% of what he would normally do (something like 95%) because the last 20% usually takes the same amount of the effort. Development example: cover 80% of the possible file types an application might need to ingest. If users start asking for one of the 20% of filetypes then you can add said filetype later on. Mowing the lawn: it's fine to skip the absolute edges of the lawn. You can come back with a strimmer later on to tidy up.
Tade0 6y ago
I use the moniker "CEO Richard Johnson" for such stories. Anyway I'm so painfully aware of the 80/20 rule that during college I came up with the concept of "lifetime success rate" as in - "the end result of any endeavor done with the maximum effort one could apply". Mine is at around 83%[0], which makes getting to 90% of anything a nightmare. [0] This was my result of the final high school exam in Physics - a subject I almost failed a year before and managed to learn from scratch with the guidance of the best tutor I ever had.
dnh44 6y ago
I think you've remembered the name correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sainsbury,_Baron_Sainsbury_of_Turville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sainsbury,_Baron_Sainsbu...

oigursh 6y ago

He's asking your dad not to finish any work? This is really hard to apply to development or, say, mowing the lawn.

abiogenesis 6y ago
It is applicable to most things. You can omit some bells and whistles while doing development, or skip edging after mowing the lawn.
dijksterhuis 6y ago
No, he asked him to do 80% of what he would normally do (something like 95%) because the last 20% usually takes the same amount of the effort. Development example: cover 80% of the possible file types an application might need to ingest. If users start asking for one of the 20% of filetypes then you can add said filetype later on. Mowing the lawn: it's fine to skip the absolute edges of the lawn. You can come back with a strimmer later on to tidy up.

Tade0 6y ago

I use the moniker "CEO Richard Johnson" for such stories. Anyway I'm so painfully aware of the 80/20 rule that during college I came up with the concept of "lifetime success rate" as in - "the end result of any endeavor done with the maximum effort one could apply". Mine is at around 83%[0], which makes getting to 90% of anything a nightmare. [0] This was my result of the final high school exam in Physics - a subject I almost failed a year before and managed to learn from scratch with the guidance of the best tutor I ever had.

dnh44 6y ago

I think you've remembered the name correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sainsbury,_Baron_Sainsbury_of_Turville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sainsbury,_Baron_Sainsbu...