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80 - 20, 20 - 80
by Dave
Friday, November 21, 2008
I think most people are familiar with the ole 80-20 rule. That is the generally accepted wisdom that tells us 80% of all our results come from 20% of our efforts. The corollary to this is just as important and that is, the last 20% of results come from 80% of our efforts. The trouble with the 80-20 rule in athletic and many other endeavors is, what we are really after is the final 20%, not the first 80!
Before I get going on this thread, I want to specify that I don't particularly care about the precision of 80-20. It may be that your personal credo is 75-25 or some such. Maybe the truth is 30% of all efforts really yield 70% of all results. But in normal parlance, the phrase is 80-20. And since it is general wisdom, we don't so much need to get the numbers precisely correct. In other words, we are not willing to expend the energy necessary to precisely nail the exact percentages. We are not willing to go that extra 80% - we accept the rule as 80-20 because that only requires 20% of our mental effort.
Yesterday, I received an e-mail newsletter from a source I like a lot, Marc Dagenais, which had the title "How to Easily Get 80% of Batters Out." The substance of the newsletter was "pitch inside and low" and that should get 80% of all batters out. Perhaps that's true. But if you get 80% of the batters out, what is the result? The answer to this quiz is 6 batters are not gotten out and 21 are retired in a regulation 7 inning game. That's pretty much sufficient in most games. But in your typical 1-0 semi-final or championship game, it is just not enough!
Understand that I'm not in any way picking on Marc's advice. I'm really getting at something bigger. Most of us know the ole 80-20 rule. Many of us are lifelong subscribers to it. It is an important principle when, for example, we have way too much on our plate and must prioritize what we can get done or decide what is going to be put on the back burner. And sometimes our hectic lives require that we take care of just the most important 80% via 20% of our efforts and then hope to get to the other stuff later. Yet, what distinguishes most people and things are those final 80%.
Imagine going out for a steak dinner. You could go to Applebees or you could go to some very expensive five star steak house. At Applebees, you'll get real beef and it may be covered with some sauce, 80% of the possible. Your dinner will cost about about $10 or so, assuming you just get the basic meal. At the steak house, you'll have to dig much deeper into your pocket, perhaps paying $50 or more for the basic entree. And what you'll get on your plate should be something which is a bit above the typical Applebees fare. The meat should be a much better cut. It should be cooked to perfection. And the sauce will likely be other-worldly.
It may not always be the case that when you go out on the town and hit the top spot that you get five star quality. But if a restaurant does not repeatedly deliver top notch items, it will quickly go out of business. Top restaurants get top dollar because they command top dollar, they put out the extra 80% to deliver something at least 20% better. Any restaurant that is inconsistent or which charges more while delivering less is likely to lose out to ones which cost less and deliver the same 80% quality. The key to the restaurant business is to decide whether you want to offer 80% or 100% product, then expend the requisite effort to deliver it, and, of course, charge accordingly.
If you, like me, are not well off enough to go out to five star restaurants, you still can relate to the 80-20 rule as it pertains to food. I'm not much of a chef but one thing I can make is a really good tomato sauce. I'm not even a little Italian but I grew up in a town which was about half Italian. Most of my friends grew up enjoying really good tomato "gravies" and sauces. If you live in a place in which you think of the Olive Garden when you want Italian food, I feel sorry for you, but that's not the type of food I'm talking about. If you don't know the difference between "gravies" and sauces, gravies use meat while sauces do not.
In any event, when I was a bachelor, one of my roomates was a genuine Italian fellow who liked to cook. He taught me how to make tomato "gravies." I translated the basic recipe to make tomato sauce and still occassionally make it. I hadn't made a sauce in years but grew weary of the jarred, commercially available variety so I decided to make some of my own. The basic recipe is tomatoes, garlic, onion, fresh basil, salt, pepper, a little sugar to cut the tomatoes' tartness, a little this and that, cook it for a certain length of time and then let it rest. I didn't feel like exceeding the 20% effort threshhold so I used what we had around the house including basil that had been frozen and I didn't cook it nearly as long as I have in the past when I have made really good sauce. The result was far superior to anything you would get at the Olive Garden or out of any jar. But it didn't meet my expectations. So the next time I resolved to expend the full effort. I went out to the store and bought better garlic, the right kind of tomatoes and onions, etc. I even bought a little red wine which always makes a sauce better - that's wine in the sauce. I cooked my sauce quite a bit longer at lower heat and voila, the finished product was one of my better efforts. I expended the remaining 80%, made something at least 20% better, and it was worth it.
Similarly, if you are well healed and purchase a top notch automobile, you may notice something along the same lines. All the other, less expensive, cars can actually get to the same places you can, and usually in about the same amount of time. They perform 80% of the function of your personal transportation and do so at about 20% of the cost. But they don't have leather seats, quite as good of a sound system, or the same kind of environmental controls. They might not have quite the same pickup or handling. Their engines are not as quiet as yours. When you sit behind the wheel of your expensive automobile, you feel good about it. When you get into one of those far cheaper ones, you understand why you spent so much to buy yours.
People are similar in terms of the 80-20 rule. We all know people who are perfectly nice in our neighborhoods. When we see them, they wave or smile a bit before turning away and going on with their lives. We also know a few people who seem to genuinely care about us. They know our kid's names and approximate ages, if not personal interests. They have a sense of what is important to us. They can relate to us on more than a superficial level. We intuitively like such people because we believe they care at least somewhat about us as opposed to the people who simply wave because they don't want us or anyone else to think they are unfriendly. One person seems to be pleasant because they care about us. The other is pleasant, though less so, because they care about themselves. One person puts out 20% effort and the other 100%.
Think about all the dealings you have had in your life with salespeople of various stripes. They are all pretty much apparently friendly and outgoing. A few are not and those people usually end up doing something else for a living - they can't even put out the minimum required 20%! But most (80%?) are only superficially friendly. The rest (20%?) are a peg above that. They do their jobs very well and try to do everything in their power to make you feel as if you are important to them. They go the extra mile - maybe we should say extra 8 tenths of a mile - and that usually makes all the difference. Salespeople may be a dime a dozen but that's no baker's dozen - the 13th salesperson is really good and it is next to impossible to avoid buying whatever he or she is selling!
In academic pursuits, I believe it is possible to achieve average grades (C's and B's), by only putting out a relatively low level of effort. Of course, that belief is outside the realm of real learning disabilities but don't get me going on that subject because I've got more to say than I care to.
Average grades are OK. They'll get you through graduation. They may get you into and through a college which will make you ready to step into the workforce. But they won't provide the opportunity to live an inspired life. You won't get into the college of your dreams. They won't make you excited about learning. You won't be thrilled with your career opportunities. You will be average and there's nothing wrong with that. But the alternative is something more. And it requires much greater effort.
In softball, at first it takes all your efforts just to learn the most basic skills. But before long, we begin to swing the bat better, make accurate and fairly strong throws, field much better. It really takes only so much effort (20%?) to be a serviceable (80%) ballplayer. But serviceable ballplayers often aren't the ones who win the accolades and ovations. They don't win games, especially the big ones. Serviceable ballplayers don't hit the best pitchers or make spectacular plays in the field. Serviceable pitchers don't completely shut down the best hitting teams.
I do understand that the vast majority of us, perhaps 80%, really do not aspire to play for (or have our kids play for) the teams at the women's college world series or to tryout for Team USA. Most of us are content to play well. Yet, it does not escape me that anyone involved in this sport does so precisely because of the thrill of playing it well. We don't want to be 80% ballplayers. We don't want to merely be serviceable. We expend far more than 20% of the possible effort level in order to be something more than 80%.
One of the main benefits of pursuing any athletic endeavor is to learn the value of exceeding 20% effort. We, or our kids, could just go to school, get decent grades, participate in a few sports on the lowest possible level and be happy with all that. When we go out onto the softball diamond, we want to make above average plays, get good hits at important moments, be the dominant pitcher, if only for a short while.
The average batter, 80% of all batters, makes an out - about 80% of all at-bats result in outs. Average fielders do frequently make errors. Average pitchers do get pummeled. We accept that making outs and fielding errors, getting hit hard or having a generally bad pitching outing are all part of the game. But we don't seek out mediocrity or we would do so without the experience of getting struck by pitched or hit balls, without having to face 50-60 mph pitches, 90 mph hit balls, etc. Mediocrity is easy to find and there is absolutely no reason to step onto the field if that's what you seek.
I think it is important to recognize that when we choose to engage in the voluntary activity of fastpitch softball, we do so not merely to play or have fun. Certainly we want to have fun but we are looking for more than mediocrity. We want to be good.
The pathway to being good is to expend the extra 80% of effort. Don't settle for 80% results by expending 20% effort unless that is specifically what you seek. Instead, take a look around and see what else you can do. Identify the players who are really good and observe what they do. You do not have to duplicate their precise actions but take notice of how hard they work, how focused they are, how much overall effort they seem to give to the game. Then understand how much you give. If you want to be better than you are, give more. Lift yourself to higher levels.
The reason I write this today comes from a complex batch of experiences. I have seen a number of people decide to back off the effort of becoming really good ballplayers because they see some team or some kid who are already there. They reason to themselves that they or their kid just does not have that kind of potential. This often happens when folks contemplate the level of ball played in the states which historically have yielded the greatest number of top ballplayers. This also can happen when one travels outside one's comfort zone and just goes to compete at some higher level tournament, maybe out of state, and witnesses girls who put everything they have into the game in order to strive to compete on the highest levels they can possibly attain.
Last night I had a discussion with a head coach of a team one of my kid's used to play for. The details of the discussion are not important but underneath it all was this thread having to do with levels of competition. The terms this fellow used were "A team" vs. B, C, or D teams. He said, "you know, maybe we are really a B, C, or D team but I don't want to play in those tournaments where you find those teams. I'd rather lose every game to really good teams than win a whole tournament against bad ones." He went on to elaborate that sometimes it certainly was good to win even against lower level competition but he did not enjoy those times as much as all the higher level tournaments his team had played.
I reminded the coach about times in which our B, C, or D team had given an A team a run for its money. On a select few occasions, we had done more than that, beating self-described A teams, sometimes quite badly. He remembers those times fondly, far more fondly than those times his team beat bad teams. That's really what this is all about.
A few years back I took charge of a team of under-experienced girls and we played a rough schedule. In the end, our schedule may have been a bit too far above us. Our win-loss record was pretty weak. But on several occasions we beat some really good teams. When I think back to that year, the times we beat good teams stick out in my memory. I don't really think of the times we beat bad teams or got mercied by really good ones. I think about the growing we did that year which allowed us to compete with the best available talent.
In my discussion with the coach of my kid's former team, he kept coming back to issues of personal growth. He remembers games in which far inferior teams lost to us and lamented that the kids didn't really get anything out of those. But even the really bad losses to good teams stood out as positive growth experiences. He concluded that he would continue to seek out the best tournaments he could find regardless of outcome.
Recently, a woman I have not seen on the softball diamond for years took charge of a local "quasi-travel" team. I call the team "quasi-travel" because it is an outgrowth of a rec all-star program which does not play many tournaments and the few they do play do not often draw the best competition. They looked around for a league in which to play fall ball. By pure accident, they happened into a league which draws a bunch of better travel teams and a few "quasi-travel" teams like hers. She was so taken by the apparent talent she saw that she has resolved to bring her team to that level next year even if she has to remake the roster.
This woman has a daughter who plays on her team. The daughter never really made much of travel softball and neither she nor her mother had any knowledge of the world that laid outside the gates of their local area. But the kid always wanted to play at the highest levels possible. They just didn't realize what was out there, not very far from home. The eye-opening fall ball experience completely reshaped their views. Now, the type of ball they have played for several years just isn't good enough.
When I started this writing, I mentioned an article which told of how to get 80% of batters out. I explained why that isn't good enough. I got into a discussion about how almost everything in our lives involes some sort of 80-20 dynamic and when we want something really good, 80% just isn't good enough. I brought this back to the softball world by talking generally about sport and then describing some experiences in which folks have come to realize that playing average softball is not what they want to do. If my roundabout way of describing a pursuit of something more than 80% has bored you to tears, I apologize. I want to drive home the point that merely playing something like softball is probably not enough to maximize one's possibilities, one's enjoyment.
If we sit down and split up the game of softball into skills and qualities needed to succeed, it is pretty easy to come up with several main areas. Obviously one's general physical condition is important, as is strength. One must be able to run. A softball player must be able to athletically retrieve balls hit to their position, as well as run out grounders and basehits. Further, flexibility is important. Also, certain hand-eye skills are unavoidable. One must learn the basic mechanics of fielding, throwing, etc. One must develop a reasonably good swing. There are other skills and qualities but I think you get the basic idea.
Now, if you do absolutely nothing, you get absolutely nothing. And if you do little, you get little. If you put out say a 20% effort, you get something like an 80% outcome. But as you do incrementally more than 20%, your abilities, skills, and qualities improve.
In case you are wondering, there is a theme in all this. And this piece is particularly timely. Right now is just before Thanksgiving. It is November. There are just over three months before high school season gets underway here. For those younger and merely playing spring travel or rec ball, you have a little more time than that. If you look over my posts over the past month, a couple had to do with visualization, one had to do with developing pitches, one had to do with catching skills, some exclusively with batting, and yet others with physical training. For the most part, after the summer tournament season is over, I like to post general topics dealing with the things you can and should work on during the offseason. Sure, sometime I ramble on about almost nothing at all. But essentially I usually come back to something you can do to improve your game.
Now is the time to analyze what your weak points are and decide what you need to do to fix them. You may need to develop the strength or mechanics of your swing. You may need to pitch at a faster speed. You may just need to work on your overall athleticism. Whatever you need to do, all things are possible from this point forward. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
A few years ago I interacted with three particular girls. None could run very well. They all carried a little extra weight and their running mechanics were poor. One girl thought, "I can't run. I never could run and I expect I'll never be able to run." Another girl reasoned, "I can't run but you have to run in softball. I love softball so I better learn how to run." The third girl wasn't quite as motivated but she thought to herself, "I can't run and you have to run on the softball field. I get embarrassed when I run badly and people make fun of me."
As you might imagine, the last two girls worked to learn how to run. They got involved in the sort of physical training which required them to run a lot. Now, two years later, one girl is rather fast. She's trimmed down quite a bit and is very athletic looking. The other girl has not achieved quite that level of success but she is definitely getting much faster and doesn't get laughed at anymore. The first girl, the one who couldn't run and was resigned to that fact, still cannot run. In fact, when one sees her try to run, it is remarkable how slow she is. It seems as if she has actually gotten slower. The two girls whose running improved are enjoying the game of softball quite a bit more than they once did. The girl who did not put out the effort to improve her running is suffering through some more difficult times.
This effort of working on running skills was done with the help of a physical trainer but it doesn't necessarily have to require substantial cost. Girls who aspire to play on the highest levels are probvably well advised to get themselves in a highly structured training class. But the average girl who wants to run better or just get more athletic doesn't need quite that much. Attending a few sessions with someone skilled at teaching running mechanics can do wonders, especially if she continues to run some sort of workout afterwards.
A 4-second-to-first kid is not going to go to three classes and magically start getting down there in 3.1. But if she learns how to run and then runs on her own, I would guess that she wouldn't have any trouble making it in 3.8 inside of three months. By the end of the high school softball season, she'll probably make it in 3.6. By the end of the summer travel season, she will be there in 3.5 which isn't bad. And at the end of two years of consistent effort, when this year's freshman class will be mere juniors, when this year's sixth graders will be eighth graders, that 4 second time likely will be the much more reasonable 3.3, perhaps better. I don't believe you can take some kid who has very limited athletic potential and turn her into a 2.9 but I am absolutely convinced that nearly every human being can be made to run quite a bit faster through an effort and thereby become a much better ballplayer.
The same principle applies to fielding, hitting, or whatever. Any softball player who decides today to start into a regular program of exercises and/or drills in order to make herself into a better player, will see some improvements by spring,more by the end of summer, and within two years should no longer recognize the player she once was.
Please understand that I'm not contemplating a 7 day-per-week / two hour-per-day complete exercise regimen. I'm talking about doing more than you are currently doing, period. If you want to swing the bat better and are taking the winter off, find a place in your house, without furniture or lighting fixtures and take 50 (100?) dry swings 3 times a week. If you are a pitcher with no available place to practice, find a closet, pile up towels or blankets and work hand snaps or partial throws. Get yourself a five dollar, soft, weighted ball at some sporting goods store and snap it outdoors for ten minutes a day - you should not experience frostbite or hypothermia in that period of time. Work your entire motion without a ball, in front of a mirror if you can. If you are a catcher, do quad muscle exercises during commercials of American Idol. Get into your normal position and bounce up to make that throw to second. Do some pushups. Do some of those exercises you learned in gym class. Do some lunges in your bedroom before you take a shower at night. Get something like a very light dumdbell and perform wrist curls to strengthen your wrists for hitting and the myriad other skills needed in softball. Jump, really jump, up and down thirty times. Do some sort of short duration exercise program three or four times a week and your athletic abilities will improve. You will become a better player. Girl jump on it, you know you want it!
In closing, let me say that Marc Dagenais is in no way an advocate for expending 20% effort to realize 80% of your possible game. In fact, his participation in softball is largely teaching the 80% which yields the final 20% results. But his discussion about pitching inside and low just triggered in me the need to discuss the ole 80-20 rule. I understand that many folks don;t have the resources, financial and otherwise to engage in a full, all out assault on athletic training. I also understand that not everyone wants to become a member of Team USA. I suspect that everyone would like to be better than they are now. That is the human condition. So get out and do more than 20%. Do something which will yield some results. It's worth it.Labels: pre-season preparation, work ethic
 
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