DREAMS ARE NOT ENOUGH (Culled from my work, A LEAP TO GREATNESS)

Apply insight from 80/20 rule

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If you want to hit the bull’s eyes and all you got is a dream then you will end up real frustrated and fagged out. I am not trying to scare you stiff; no, I am only giving you a reality check. I have seen many with ‘big dreams’, ‘great dreams’ who ended up nowhere.

Maybe I should explain. If you have a dream of becoming a superstar musician in the class of the Michael Jackson and you can’t sing, then you got a problem, and it’s a major one. Most likely you’ll end up frustrated and an embarrassment to your friends and family. I can tell you something with certainty – being a music star is not going to happen for you.

Now let’s look at it this way. If on scale of 1 – 10 your ability in music is, say 3 and you work real hard, you can take it up to say 5. That is average. Average ability can’t take you anywhere. But on the other hand if your ability in painting is let say 6 and you work on it you can take it up to 8 or 9. That is distinction. With that you are guaranteed a place at the very top.

Do you see a man who excels in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before mere men.

Proverbs 22:29

What am I saying? Don’t waste your time and effort on area of your weaknesses [weaknesses in terms of gift and talent please], rather work and develop your strength and align it with your dream. Find what is it that you can easily do better than others and work on it and you will be on your way to becoming a celebrity.

This is where the 80/20 rules comes in. the 80/20 rule states that 80% of our output results from 20% of our input; that 80% results come from 20% efforts. For example, in most banks 20% of the branches accounts for 80% of the profit. 20% of our time produces 80% of the results. Even in a picnic, 20% of the people will eat 80% of the food.

A glaring application of the 80/20 rule is in mobile phone 3310 designed by Nokia. Nokia realize that 80% of phone users only utilize 20% of the phone’s features [i.e. making calls and sending sms]. So they designed 3310 to suit this need, thereby creating one of the most user-friendly phones ever.

A corollary of this is that a large proportion (80%) of our efforts is either ineffective or irrelevant, and we will do well to re-channel or redirect those effort or resources. However I must warn that in applying the 80/20 rule, caution should be taken not to interpret this principle too rigidly as the work because they represent the true nature of things: an intricate mix of order and disorder, of regular and irregular.