Have you ever thought about the people who are at the top of their careers– how they reached that level?
The journey began with just one achievement, and it seems that an unending chain-reaction started before them. They amass more and more rewards while the rest of the crowd lags behind.
So, why’s that ‘only a few people dominate the competition?’ What’s it that works only in their favor and differentiates them from the rest of the crowd?
This article states one of the greatest career secrets inspired by author James Clear’s 1 Percent Rule. After reading this, you’ll know exactly how to get that new job, win incentives, or get promotions.
Imagine! Two people with the same skills and talents participate in a contest, what do you think who’s to win? According to James Clear, if an individual is at least 1% better than their contestant, they win. And as the advantageous position comes to someone, it further benefits them to reach to the next level, and a series of accomplishments is unlocked for them.
But how does this happen?.
The Pareto Principle
One day in the late 1800s, a young Italian named Wilfredo Pareto was lounging in his garden gazing at his seasonal crop of peas. In a moment, Pareto realized that he had discovered a small yet interesting pattern– only a small number of pods produced the largest peas.
What if this unequal distribution was present in other areas of life as well? Pareto thought.
As an economist, Pareto decided to dig more on the unequal distribution of resources. He started by collecting data on wealth distribution in Italy. To his surprise, Pareto found that almost 80% of wealth in Italy was occupied by just 20% of people. Just like peas in his garden, most of the wealth was bounded by only a minority.
Pareto felt excited, so he expanded his research to distribution of income in Britain. Almost shockingly, just 30% of the British earned 70% of the country’s income, found his research.
The economist continued exploring his great discovery, and found that though the number varied, the pattern was consistent among most disciplines of life. His discovery became known as Pareto’s principle or more commonly as the 80/20 rule: “only a small number of things account for the majority of reward”.
Inequality, Everywhere
The 80/20 rule applies to almost any area of life. For example, in the 2015-2016 season of the National Basketball Association, just 20% of franchises won 75.3% of the championships. Similarly, in soccer, though 77 different countries competed in the World Cup, just three countries (Brazil, Germany, and Italy) could win 13 of the first 20 World Cup tournaments.
In the technology industry, we saw that Google alone received 64% of search queries, in 2015, with no other competing engines coming close to it.
Talking of the world income distribution, we saw that in 2013, just 8.4% of the world population carried about 83% of the world’s wealth.
So why is it that only a few people, teams and organizations lead the victory and are more likely to grow consistently unlike their competitors?
The Power of Accumulative Advantage
Why did Pareto’s pea pods produced unequally? In the Amazon rainforest, scientists found that there are 16 thousand different tree species covering the entire Amazon. However, despite the enormous diversity more than half of the forest is dominated by just 277 tree species.
To explain the difference in equality, imagine two plants potted side by side. Both of them get the same sunlight, soil and water quantity. But somehow, if one plant manages to grow faster one day, the next day it can use this additional energy to absorb more sunlight, soak more water and expand deeper in the soil. The next day, it can grow even more taller, leading ahead of its neighbor plant. After some time, this plant spreads healthier seeds and reproduces its next generation that dominates the entire garden.
Notice, the healthier plant used the advantage of one day to grow even faster the other day, while the competitor plant lagged behind with a lower position in the contest. This is called accumulative advantage: when the advantages over time combine together enabling anybody to capture most of the rewards in the longer run.
The 1% Rule
Performing just a little bit better one day can enable someone to grow even faster the other day and ultimately dominate the competition. What started as 1% gain is now starting to trend towards the 80/20 rule.
So what can you do to progress in your career and compete in the fierce competition?
Start with improving your skills. If you are a working professional then you must know of all the skills that are required in your profession. Simply getting better in each of these can offer you an edge over your competitors when you apply for promotion, increment or a new job.
For example, an IT professional requires 3 skills for the job role of a data engineer: SQL, Python, and data visualization.
While obviously a working professional knows all three but note it’s not necessary the IT professional knows exactly how to use SQL to carry out data quality inspection. And here’s where they can bring an improvement to get to a slightly better position in the market.
Similarly, getting just 1% better in the other two skills can bring further advantage to them. The next time they apply for a job, getting to display this new dimension of their skillset improves their chance of getting selected for the job.
The key resources available in the next job can further ramp up their success if they use this advantageous position to grow further. At some later stage in their career, this IT professional leads the competition by being at a grand position where they use the rare resources/privileges to bring the highest value for the industry.
Even if an IT person doesn’t have a job, the 1% rule still applies to bring the ultimate 80/20 position. A person who’s currently seeking employment might have a rare resource such as time. Utilizing the spare time into seeking key skills for a job, and finding the space to become just a little bit better than those who are inexperienced can help them take the first step that ignites the chain of accumulative advantage. Taking the example of a data engineer again, learning SQL is just half of the work done, which is present in most of the profiles, however, approaching the subject with a critical eye such as thinking on how one concept relates to the other can certainly polish their analytical ability enabling them to perform faster than the rest of the crowd.
Gaining 1% improvement can happen in endless possibilities. One just needs to spot the limited resources that are available to an individual at their current position.
