80 15 5 rules to keep work fresh
Published: 2022-04-21 07:10:08

Freshness is a good but hateful thing. Freshness can keep people excited and interested in all kinds of people and things; but it is very short-lived. Once the freshness is gone, the passion and interest will be greatly reduced. 

This article starts from the work and introduces a rule that can keep fresh: 80/15/5.

The 80/15/5 rule is said to have been proposed by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, which says:

> 80% of your time goes to low-risk/reasonable-reward work 15% of your time goes to related high-risk/ high-reward work 5% of your time goes to satisfying your own curiosity

- 80% of the time is spent on low-risk/reasonable returns.
- 15% of the time is spent on high-risk/high-return work.
- 5% of your time is used to satisfy your own curiosity.

The whole logic is like this. When you are at work, you spend 80% of your time doing routine content, and in the process, you will think about what measures can improve the process, tools, documents and structure of the work, etc., and apply them to the work. These thoughts are actually high-risk and high-return.

Record these thoughts, and then implement the improvement plans you think about every once in time. Most of these plans will not work. After all, they are high-risk, but once they succeed, they will bring great returns. This implementation process is 15% of the 80/15/5 rule. The specific implementation time is about 6 hours a week, because 6⁄40 = 15% (40 hours of standard work a week).

At the same time, in the regular 80% time, some work will be gradually completed, and you can also gradually train people who will take over the relevant issues in the future. Then when you lose the freshness of this 80% part, because some problems have been solved or there are candidates who have taken over the problem, and the other 15% part will introduce new jobs in the implementation thinking, then this "work content assembly line" will be sustainable.

This is the 80% + 15% part, and there is still 5% left. Take programmers as an example. In these 5%, you can do in-depth research on new development tools, programming languages, algorithms or data structures that you are interested in.

This 5% is about 2 hours a week. Although it accounts for the smallest proportion, because it is your interest in itself, then when you study it carefully, it will bring more rewards, and it can even let you enter a new world. And what comes from here is more likely to be more meaningful than the 15% part, and it is more likely to reach 80%, becoming a better "working content pipeline".


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After understanding this law, I suddenly had a sense of "pipe" in my mind.

80/15/5 It is said that the key point of "freshness" can be obtained, but in fact, it balances the risk, novelty, productivity efficiency, short-term certainty and long-term feasibility of the work. In fact, it makes the focus and energy distribution in the work more sustainable, and also makes the whole work more efficient and refined. .

In fact, in addition to work, we can also see the positive and negative effects of freshness in all aspects such as getting along with our lovers, schoolwork, further study of interests and hobbies, eating, and even sports persistence.

It is actually ubiquitous, and it seems that nothing can compete with it except addiction. However, the 80/15/5 rule does not just "fresh" from the front, but adopts a side "reduction" approach, by weighing the importance of some of the factors that need to be concerned at work, so as to properly allocate focus and energy to form a sustainable workflow, so that you can focus on and The energy is no longer single, creating the illusion that you will always feel fresh when you work in this way.

Although this is an introduction to a practical tool, and it seems to belong to a little "positive energy", in order not to flow chicken soup, I forcibly pick a thorn myself: if it has been implemented for two days, I have no freshness in the 80/15/5 rule itself and I don't want to use it, what should I do?

So in fact, in the final analysis, if you don't study a way to make the freshness itself invalid and addict to what addiction you want, the proposition that freshness will have an abominable negative impact will not disappear (so the "illusion" is mentioned earlier). As for how much struggle you use with this 80/15/5 rule, it depends on the reader. After all, the reality is like this. All you can do is to "try to find white underwear in the chaos".

In addition, regarding the 5% part, it also reminds me of the discussion about "fishing". Some people think that fishing is completely bad and should be completely suppressed, and there is no room for fishing. I guess they are all leaders.

But if they can understand that a little working time is given to employees to fish, so that they can explore things that can grow up and things that can be applied to work. For example, programmers like to study IDE plug-ins, and even learn to write some plug-ins to assist their development work, then their The working status and efficiency will actually become better. Don't Google also have that 20% personal project time? Although I heard that this does not actually exist~)