Most people are aware of the Pareto principle

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Yet we fail to design our habits and behaviours around it. When applied to self-improvement & personal habits, this means a few key incidents or triggers drive the bulk of your behaviour. However we waste unnecessary attention on the remaining 80% of incidents that hardly cause any impact. Say I want to reign in my alcohol intake. As a typical non-alcoholic office goer, I will likely drink on the weekends when I meet friends and occasionally at work events.  One day I wake up hungover on Saturday, having had too much the previous night . I resolve to never drink again. Two weeks  pass and I’ve been completely sober; I feel good and tell everyone “I’ve been sober for two weeks straight” . People are impressed. Then another Friday pops by, my friend is feeling sad because his boss won’t give him a raise and I end up drinking too much again . In some context or the other, nearly everyone is familiar with this cycle.

So what happened here? My decision to “never drink again” was too broad to begin with and hardly addressed my actual problem. Most of my hangovers and drinking problems came from the two days of the weekend when I was likely to go out and meet friends and go overboard . On a regular office day, when I’m busy with work and chores and what not, I face nearly zero temptation to drink and consequently there is nearly zero chance of a hangover . My resolve to “never drink again” is meaningless on a boring weekday when it is not being tested. I framed the problem incorrectly. Instead I should’ve looked at the pareto nature of my habit and focused on the 80% of my problem which is drinking with friends on the weekend . I’ll “control my drinking on the weekends” might be a better framing of the problem. I might address that in all sorts of way from staying home on weekends, avoiding a certain friend, a two drink rule on weekends and what have you.

It is easy to feel happy going the motions & attacking the low impact 80%, while missing out the 20% that is doing most of the damage. There’s a great quote that applies this in reverse

“I don’t count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.” - Muhammad Ali