What’s the difference between a “Shortcut” and a “Hack”? It was not clear to me, so I decided to write this piece based on the image above that came from Lifehack.org.
I’ll take a stab at differentiating the two.
To me, a Hack is related to a soft skill and a shortcut is something I took when walking home from school by cutting through a couple of neighbor’s yards to get home faster.
There is no shortage of hacks/shortcuts and everybody loves a shortcut. Once you find and used a shortcut regularly, 80% of the time you don’t even realize that you are using it. Over time, a shortcut becomes your normal routine. Continue reading “Every Hack You Need Located In One Place”
According to the Pareto Principle, 20% of all activities produce 80% of all results. To put it in another way, people tend to expend 80% of their efforts on activities that have minimal effects on the results. The Pareto Principle can be validated by looking at many of your past successes that you are most proud of. In hindsight, it seemed so easy because we focused on the right or the best 20% of the activities, whether it was expertise, guidance or sheer luck on how things fell into place. People who are focused on activities that produce results are those who have created goals and plans and follow these plans while making minor adjustments to them. Who has time for goals? We’ll get back to that in a minute. Here’s another question: Who even has the time to read all of the content that lands in your feed? Believe it or not, you are utilizing the 80/20 rule as you purposely filter things out. We tend to filter out 80% of the online content that requires thought, learning, or reflection and head right to the 20% that the reader finds entertaining. If it was a choice between entertainment or learning and applying a new skill, most people go right for the entertainment.