90-10 Rule
I got this email from one of my friends about the 90-10 rule by Stephen Covey. I just felt that I should share it with you guys.
According to Stephen Covey '10% of life is made up of what happens to you.
90% of life is decided by how you react.'
He quoted the following example
In the morning you are getting ready for work. Just when you are ready to eat your breakfast your child spills his/her breakfast all over you.
You could react in 2 ways.
1. Become angry. Scold the kid. So the child now starts crying and you get more frustrated. It’s a chain reaction and both you and your family leave the house in an unpleasant manner. Then you think about what happened for the rest of the day, feel sorry for what you did.
2. Just clean up the mess, change your clothes and leave home with a happy face. Now everybody is happy.
So from the above example you can see that 90% of what happens to you is decided by you. Try following it. For all those human soul filled with anger and rage, just keep this in mind and you'll see a big change in how your day goes.
This does not mean that you should not speak out when it is necessary. Just try using it in those situations where it seems apt.
2 comments:
The biggest thing that I learned from Covery is - SMALL stuff are not worth the emotional investment we make in trying to "fix" things to go our way. Most of the time this approach is a NEGATIVE RATE ON RETURN when you compare the cost of emotional investment and the actual cost of the small stuff you "fixed" to go YOUR way.
The above equation is easy to understand intellectually, while difficult to practice(sometimes VERY difficult). But it can be understood and practiced successfuly.
Now, where Covey has failed so far is to figure out how to "How to Sweat the Big Stuff" successfully. These are major life issues like Parenting, Jobs, Financial planning the future, etc. I would be interested in learning ideas on practicing that part of life!!
ALso when it comes to percentages - "90:10, 80:20" etc., I wouldn't give too much credenance to that. Generally when deailing with emotional issues you are not going to be able to tell your wife - okay, you have fixed 9% off your issues, but sorry hunny - the 1% breaks the deal. These numbers are just guides.
You are absolutely right.
Most people live on a fixed schedule. Certain things have to happen by certain time. We have to wake up at a certain time, get ready to go to work at a certain time etc... We are all bound in this time machine.
So if anything happens that is going to disrupt our schedule and if the consequence of being late is going to be bad, we are forced to do certain things which we would not have done if we had enough time to let it go.
Time is just one factor. There are also other factors like environment, circumstance etc...
I think we should just have the rule in mind and try to use it wherever we really can.
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