The 80% Rule is constraining your effort and energy at or around 80%. Now, I know that goes against what we’ve all been taught, go 100% or 110% or it’s not worth the effort or no real growth or development can happen.
But let me ask this, how many people don’t do something, i.e. run, music, some other skill development, because they know they can’t do that 100-110%, beacuse they know it’s not sustainable and there’s no way they can commit to it. The second question is wouldn’t 40%, 50% or even 20% be better than 0%? Walking or jogging at 40-50% effort? Regularly practicing some music or new language at 50% produce some results. So let’s talk about “The 80% Rule”.
First, what is 80%? The 80% Rule shares some themes of concepts you might have heard before, described as the “Goldilocks Zone”, not too hard, not too easy, just right. Or “Flowstate”, the “Zone”, the effort is at the right intensity, where instinct, intuition and ability are interactivating at the same frequency. Or the “Sweetspot”, not having to try too hard, where intellecually, physically and mentally everything is fully engaged.
But let me go further by describing some specificifcations and quantifications of where we can measure that 80%.
- Sustainabililty
- Effort Difficulty (input, intellectual, physical, mental, psychological)
- Quality
- Intensity
- Recovery
I want to go into further detail on how to measure The 80% Rule under these criteria in a future essay but for now let me first describe operating outside of 80%.
Going over or past 80% exertion, closer to 90-100%. Operating at this level for too long will cause physical, mental and intellecutal fatigue. Causing potential burnout, requiring rest and recovery. Quitting or stopping during this burnout phase is at a high risk and sustainability at this rate of pace is almost impossible. But also approaches the threshold for the point of diminishing returns where trying harder doesn’t necessarily produce a better quality result.
Operating under 80% effort, is a more casual experience with less intention toward a progression, but like I said something is better than nothing. It might be focused less on a specific outcome or result, maybe more for relaxation. But maybe in this context can be categorized as maintenance or recovery mode. Where the focus isn’t so much progression, growth, development and adaptation but more so maintaining a minimum required output.