80/20 principle

I read the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch during a trip last week.
It's an excellent book that has some really important ideas for anyone
that is even mildly lazy. He goes through the easy wins of business analysis,
which is obvious until you actually try and do it (shut down unprofitable
businesses, "but they pay the overhead!").

The real heart of the book goes into applying the 80/20 principle to your
life and career. Most of your production comes from a small amount of your
effort, so focus more time and attention on that small amount instead of spreading
yourself evenly across all activities. If you work on the assembly line this won't
work, but anyone with a technical job or a sales job, a lot of time is just wasted
not moving towards the real goals.

The examples I used explaining this to my wife were Dr. house or Don Draper from
Mad Men. Dr house mostly walks around popping vicodin all day while his assistants
do most of the work until he has some flash of insight and solves the problem.
Don Draper mostly walks around drinking and smoking, has short, to the point meetings
then sends his minions to do the scutwork while he goes off to sleep with some chick.

My wife didn't like that part of the metaphor, but either guy gets his real job done
without caring to spend time punching the clock at the office or doing make-work.
The crucial thing is to decide what is the real productive part of the job using 80/20
analysis, then focus on that while drinking and chasing bimbos. (kidding).

El que tiene mucho, porque tiene mucho?

I'm becoming a soap opera addict here, we only get one
US network channel (cbs), the only channels we get with
non-crap programming in english are Sony and Universal.
After watching House and 2 1/2 men reruns, the only thing left
are the novelas "nuevo rico, nuevo pobre" and "monte christo"

I'm stuck watching Nuevo rico, just to find out what happens
to the lead idiot on the show, Brian. Who started out poor, now
is rich and will probably end up poor again by the end of the show.

Monte Christo I couldn't bring myself to watch, wasting two hours
per night on soap operas isn't a good idea, instead I picked up the
book 'Count of Monte Christo', that sat at my parents house for 15
years and now has traveled with us for the past 7 years.

The book was even better than I remembered, better than the movie
that came out a couple of years ago and certainly better than the novela
version that I'm avoiding to watch. It's interesting that I read it when I was
18 in high school and I clearly emphasized with the young edmond dantes, and
I thought the characters after the passage of 24 years were impossibly old.
(42 years old, that's nearly dead!) Even the shipowner Mr. Morrel was 34 yrs
old when the book started...he seemed ancient.

Now I think, holy heck he was the richest man in Marseille and he was only
34! I'm a freaking loser. All these years have passed and I didn't even spend
any time in Chateau d'if, unless you count 15 years offshore as sort of moving
french prisons. Now I just need a monk in the adjoining cell to tell me where
his 401k is hidden.