Thursday, March 01, 2007

Stephen Covey's 90/10 Principle

Everytime when my business is slow or I feel a bit down or stress-out from my business undertaking, I always bring to mind the 90/10 Principle, introduced by Steven Covey, the author of the international bestseller "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People".

If you've never heard of the 90/10 Principle, here's a brief explanation below.

10% of life is made up of what happens to you.

90% of life is decided by how you react.

What does this mean?

We really have no control over 10% of what happens to us. We cannot stop the car from breaking down. The plane will be late arriving, which throws our whole schedule off. A driver may cut us off in traffic. We have no control over this 10%.

The other 90% is different. You determine the other 90%.

How? By your reaction, said Covey.

You cannot control a red light, but you can control your reaction.

Covey added "don't let people fool you; YOU can control how you react."

In the perspective of my business endeavours, when business is bad, I make it a habit not to blame anything (e.g., the program only works for those Internet-savvy geeks) or anyone (e.g., that Internet guru is a scam).

I simply re-assess my reaction or in some cases, inaction (e.g., a lot of time, we saw an opportunity but was not fast enough to latch onto it).

We tend to lose sleep and get irritated when our web business, for example, is not doing as well as we'd hope for, or has yet to take off in any meaningful way after a year, or our Google Adsense income is still under $10 per month.

The 90/10 Principle tells us that all will work out if we channel all our worrying energy and time (as you know, worry actually consumes time) into finding another business or marketing strategy/tactic/etc.

Hence, the other popular quote - "There's no problem, only solutions" (John Lennon, from his song "Watching the Wheels").

Practise the 90/10 Principle. It will certainly change your life and the way you look at your business.

I know, mine has...

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