Simplify Wellness with the 80/20 Rule

An excerpt from The Wellness Ethic:

Thousands of books on wellness topics have been written throughout the ages, and if you tried to adopt all their practices, you would need a thou-sand lifetimes. There’s a better way to improve your wellness—applying the 80/20 rule—and you can do it in your lifetime.

The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle, was derived from the work of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. It states that approximately 80% of the results (outcomes) are driven by 20% of the actions (inputs).

When you apply the 80/20 rule to your life, it can be a game changer. For example, the 80/20 rule suggests that 80% of the benefits of spirituality can be attained by embracing just a few essential tenets, the most vital 20% of spiritual practices. Similarly, 80% of the benefits of taking care of your body can be realized by simply adopting the most vital 20% of physical wellness practices. The 80/20 rule encourages you to keep it simple by fo-cusing your valuable time and energy on what’s most impactful (also known as “the vital few”).

In The Wellness Ethic, I’ll apply the 80/20 rule to uncover the essence of wellness topics—the handful of concepts and practices that offer the most value to the average person—and will avoid covering every nuance. This approach will make wellness accessible and actionable. We won’t let perfect be the enemy of good.

Just so you know, my alternative to taking the 80/20 approach would have been to author a 12,000-page treatise covering every imaginable facet of wellness. I seriously considered doing that because I have a lot of time on my hands, but then I stumbled upon the cautionary tale of Madeleine de Scudéry. In the seventeenth century, de Scudéry wrote Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, a bloated, 13,095-page romance novel that was a stern test of endurance and kept readers away from tending to basic life necessities, like eating, plowing fields, and going to the outhouse.

I aspire to avoid a similar fate with The Wellness Ethic and will apply the 80/20 rule to keep it under 2,500 pages (to be safe).

You’re welcome.