The 80-20 Rule of Job Satisfaction
Every job has its flaws, Michael Gartner, the veteran editor and Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial writer, once observed during a reporting and writing seminar here at Poynter. But as long as 80 percent of a job's duties are acceptable, he said he could tolerate the 20 percent that wasn't.
Gartner's formula is a variation of an 80-20 rule first proposed in 1906 by an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto who created "a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth."
Pareto's Principle has since been applied in many other fields. In sales, it assumes that "20 percent of the customers generate 80 percent of the sales, or that 80 percent of merchandise comes from 20 percent of the vendors." In productivity circles, 20 percent of the effort produces 80 percent of the work. In warehouses, 20 percent of the stock takes up 80 percent of the space.
But while business types generally use Pareto's century-old idea to remember to pay more attention to the "vital few" rather than the "trivial many," Gartner reversed the principle to make an important point about any job: there's always going to be something you don't like about it. The question is what's the percentage of bad vs. good, boring vs. interesting.
The lesson Michael Gartner taught that day was to ask yourself what's the ratio that makes a job situation acceptable (or not) for you. Budgets weren't his favorite thing, but that kind of disagreeable task was far outweighed by the newsroom work he loved. For him, it was 80-20.
Gartner's 80-20 rule always comes to mind when someone gripes to me about their job. The pain of seeing your story mangled by the desk, the hassle of putting up with prima donna reporters who can't spell their way out of a paper bag. Interminable meetings. Insufferable colleagues. You name it.
Next time you find yourself grousing, break down the things about your job that you love and hate. What's your ratio? More important, once you know your tipping point, what do you do about it?
