13 Sep 20/80 Rule

The 20/80 Rule

It’s always good to have a moment of reflec­tion. Espe­cial­ly so when try­ing your hand at a new busi­ness. Many a times we get caught up in just com­plet­ing tasks and stay­ing busy. Think­ing we will get to our goal clos­er if we just some­how run through all these tasks as fast as pos­si­ble. Some of you might already know what I am going to get at but for those that don’t… I’d like to intro­duce the 20/80 rule. 

DISCLAIMER

Click here for my dis­claimer. It basi­cal­ly says that I am on my path to becom­ing a trad­er and these are just my opin­ions on how to approach learn­ing to trade. Feel free to check it out and com­ment on it. 

Here it goes…

The 80/20 rule??

So what does is this rule exact­ly? It believes in the prin­ci­ple that 80% of your effects come from 20% of your caus­es. Want to know more about the ori­gin and oth­er cool details and facts about how this rule comes back in nature, sci­ence, eco­nom­ics and oth­er cool areas of life, please vis­it the Wikipedia page on the Pare­to prin­ci­ple. This rule can be applied to almost any­thing. When you tru­ly under­stand this rule you will see that you don’t ‘need’ every­one around you. That you don’t ‘need’ to do any­thing that does­n’t get you clos­er to your goal. 

So, what?

The rea­son this mat­ters is that we all need some cues to tell us if we’re on the right path. Many times we sim­ply add tasks to our to-do lists but nev­er stop to won­der if they all have the same urgency and pri­or­i­ty of being com­plet­ed. Ask your­self this sim­ple ques­tion. Is this task get­ting me clos­er to my goal, or is it just keep­ing me busy. You might have heard about this ‘busy’ cul­ture where it is the hip and cool thing to say to peo­ple. ‘Oh, I real­ly want to, but I can’t. I’m busy.’ Busy doing what? If it’s to com­plete insignif­i­cant tasks you might as well go have din­ner or that drink with a friend. Then on the oth­er side there are things that we think we need to buy or oth­er­wise spend mon­ey on. Things that we think will get us close to our goal. That new com­put­er. Or that new course. What­ev­er it is. Just think about this. Most of the things we want, are lux­u­ries. Not neces­si­ties. That course you want to take? Some­one took the time to learn it and then choose to teach you for a fee (of course). I’m not say­ing that you have to rein­vent the wheel. But damn sure try and don’t get caught up in the ‘easy fix’ men­tal­i­ty. Let’s get to it. 

Clear vision

In order to know what does deserve our ‘busy­ness’ we need to deter­mine our goal first. Have a vision. This is a per­son­al mat­ter but since you are on www.bearmarkettrader.com I’ll assume it’s got some­thing to do with trad­ing. At least for my exam­ple. It can look some­thing like this:

My goal: to become a suc­cess­ful trad­er (some of you might know that I actu­al­ly changed it, read more on that here)

Mak­ing categories

I use Trel­lo for basi­cal­ly every­thing. If you don’t know what that is… Just click here! It helps me to orga­nize my thoughts, work, jour­nals, any­thing in need of writ­ing and keep­ing orga­nized. But you can do this on a sheet of paper or any­thing else. 

I have two cat­e­gories that you might have guessed. The 20, and the 80. Genius!

20

Here I write the tasks that actu­al­ly get me clos­er to becom­ing a suc­cess­ful trad­er. Tasks like: 

• Learn about can­dle­sticks and chart patterns
• Learn on how to keep a trad­ing journal
• Trade!

80

Under the 80 cat­e­go­ry I will write tasks that have no urgency but would be nice to do at some point. I’d like to plan in one day a month to go over these. Then I pick a task that I think is the most impor­tant and do that on that day. These could be tasks like:

• Change the lay­out and col­ors of my blog
• Choose a font for the website
• Use a cer­tain plugin 

Self-sabotage

The inten­tion is to focus on what actu­al­ly mat­ters. I find that it’s a form of self-sab­o­tag­ing to be busy with these ‘80%’ tasks. You are post­pon­ing what actu­al­ly needs to be done. Per­haps deep down you know that that’s what you’re doing. If not? Then let me be the one that tells you. You, are your own worst ene­my. Espe­cial­ly in trad­ing. Nev­er for­get that. To be a mas­ter in trad­ing, you need to mas­ter yourself. 

Now go hurry along. Be a master!

Thank you

Thanks for read­ing. Please leave a com­ment or con­tact me even if it’s just to say hi or I stink. Hope you’re doing great. And hap­py trading.