The 80/20 principle is a pattern discovered by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1897 while he was looking at wealth and income in England. He found that in England and everywhere else 80% of the income was being earned by 20% of the population. 80% of the wealth was held by 20% of the population. Now most of us have actually heard of this. Whenever you hear people talking about the 1% of people in this country that hold 99% of the wealth. That is an 80/20 examination of the wealth distribution in the United States. It's important to remember 80/20 are just round numbers. The exact ratios are not important, what is important is to recognize the inequity of distribution. 80/20 had been called the Pareto Principle, the Pareto Law, the Principle of Least Effort, the 80/20 Rule, and the Principle of imbalance.

Since Pareto's discovery others have expanded on the 80/20 Rule, like George Zipf the founder of the "Principle of Least Effort" in 1949 and Joseph Moses Juran, the man behind the quality revolution in 1950. More recently Richard Koch wrote the "80/20 Principle" in 1997 and Tim Ferriss wrote the "4 Hour Work Week". Together, these books expand on Pareto's ideas and show how The 80/20 Rule can be applied in the modern world. It has been shown that the 80/20 principle applies almost everywhere we look. 1.3% of movies generate 80% of box office revenue. 20% of criminals account for 80% of the value of all crime. Simply put, in most things you do in life 80% of the positive outputs are coming from 20% of the inputs. 80% of negative outcomes are coming from 20% of your behaviors. On and on. Here are a couple quotes from Koch's "The 80/20 Principle" which I think might explain how it triggered in me a complete paradigm shift on how I was thinking about addiction and 12 step.

"Traditional thinking is encased within a powerful but sometimes inaccurate and destructive mental model. It is linear. It believes that x leads to y, that y causes z, and that b is the inevitable consequence of a…. Scientists and historians have long abandoned linear thinking."

"The common attributes of 80/20 thinking are that it's reflective, unconventional, hedonistic, strategic, and non-linear"

"The objective of 80/20 thinking is to generate action which will make sharp improvements in your life and that of others. Action of this kind requires unusual insight. Insight requires reflection and introspection"

Tim Ferriss's "The 4 Hour Work Week" was especially useful to me. He talks about asking two questions when you come across a problem you can't solve.

What would this look like if it were simple?
What if I did the opposite?

I asked "what would addiction look like if it were simple?" When I was trying to understand why 12 step kept failing me I asked "what if I did the opposite?" The answers to these two questions changed my life forever in is the entire bases of this blog.

Applying the 80/20 principle to the problem of addiction was what I needed to do to not just arrest it but completely rewire my brain, to cure it. When you go from using drugs every day to a rehab or 12 step groups the lifestyle changes are many and they are massive. To say "I went to rehab and my life improved" doesn’t really tell you much because so many things are different in rehab than they are when you are in active addition. Assuming that everything you do in rehab/sober living/12 step has an equal distribution of benefit is flawed thinking. It created this confused state where multiple areas in my life would improve temporarily and then slide backwards but because I assumed that the 12 steps were all beneficial, that everything I learned in 12 step meetings was correct and beneficial, and everything I did and learned in rehab was beneficial I could never get a hold on what inputs were producing benefit and maybe more importantly what inputs were causing harm. Until I did my own 80/20 analysis. That journey is what this blog is about. Thank you for reading.