The 90% Rule
Execution is the art of bringing plans into fruition, and is the thing that divides those who aspire and those who achieve. So how do you get better at executing? Ruthless prioritisation, and extreme accountability.
When making plans, it is easy to get overly excited, and add dozens of items and objectives into ever growing to do lists. We wrongly associate the number of things that we do with the magnitude of the results that we will achieve. However, this is the wrong way of looking at things. The most likely scenario is that the majority of your results will come from a small number of high impact actions. So the question becomes, how do you choose these actions, and where do you draw the line between those actions that are important enough, and those that can be left unattended.
Here I introduce the 90% rule, which is to only commit to do things you are 90% sure you will do, and hold all of your reputation on the line for those things being done.
Let’s break this down.
The first part of the rule is to only commit to things you are 90% sure you will do. It is important to note that this commitment is not necessarily tied to a result. For example, you can commit to start a company, move to a different country, or ask a girl out, but you cannot “commit” on the result. You cannot ensure the company will thrive, nor that you will develop ties with your new home, nor that the girl will agree on a date! So what I mean when I talk about the first part of the 90% rule is that you should only commit to things you are 90% sure you will try!
The second part of the rule is to hold all your reputation on the line for those things being done. By this I mean that you should hold yourself extremely accountable to all of the things you commit to do, and that you should feel extremely ashamed by failing to do (try) those things. This forces you to limit the amount of things you decide to focus on, regardless of whether they are a big or a small task. For example, DO NOT say “we should grab coffee sometime” if you are not going to execute immediately, asking for available dates and offering choices of cafe shops.
Whenever someone offers you something, or whenever you are about to make an empty process, you will have to think deeply whether this is something you will do or not. If it’s something that you are not certain you will do (be it because you lack the time, interest, resources), then do not commit! Because if you do and you fail to deliver, you SHOULD feel ashamed of yourself.
Because of this, you will become much better at saying no to things, which will allow you to ruthlessly focus on the handful of things you have committed to, increasing the likelihood of you actually doing the thing!
This creates a virtuous cycle, with specially important psychological implications. If you ALWAYS do the things you commit yourself to do, people will start considering you as someone of insane execution capacity, who holds his word under any circumstance. But most importantly, YOU will begin to consider yourself a reliable person, and you will increasingly make that a part of your identity. This will reinforce your confidence in your execution capabilities, and will maintain that willingness to ruthlessly prioritize and say NO to those things you are not 90% sure you’ll execute on.
Before ending, I want to add a small caveat regarding ambition, which has been briefly touched upon, but would like to expand it.
When I talk about being 90% sure of doing something, I mean being 90% sure that you will actually give it your best shot at succeeding. For example, starting a company is a risky venture. Depending on the type of company you start, success rates range from roughly 50% for a traditional business, to somewhere between 5% and 10% for riskier alternatives like a startup.
With such success rates, you will never be 90% sure of succeeding at starting a business. Does that mean you should not do it? Absolutely not! You should strive for difficult opportunities and take a ton of risks, especially if you are young. Trying to the best of one’s ability involves deep levels of learning, and that is already a success.
When I talk about avoiding things that you are not 90% sure you’ll do, I refer to empty promises or half-baked statements, that give you a dopamine push when you say it but that you actually never end up following through. “Let’s talk about it next week!”, “We should definitely plan this trip!”, “Let me make you an intro!”, “I’ll quit my job!”. These are all typical examples of empty promises that I am sure you have either made or received many times, and which, a very high percentage of the times, go unfulfilled.
The word of a person that makes plenty of this and does not follow up loses value, even if the broken promises are harmless and insignificant. Similarly, if you make these types of promises and do not follow up, your self-esteem (i.e. the reputation you have of yourself) will decrease.
On the other hand, if someone ALWAYS follows up with the promises they made, you will be amazed at this person’s integrity and capacity to execute, EVEN if this person makes less promises on average. Likewise, if you ALWAYS follow through (or at least 90% of the time ;)), you will strengthen your self-esteem and your identity as a person who is capable like none other to execute on promises and commitments.
The remaining 10% that does not get executed will be because of things that are clearly not in your control, for which you will never be able to account for (being 100% sure of doing something is impossible). For example, “Let’s play football this weekend!”. If you break your leg on Thursday, there’s really nothing you can do, but when you make the promise, you could be 90% sure that you would play.
In summary, the 90% rule is to only say things you are 90% sure you’ll do, and place extreme reputational importance on this. You will become a much better executioner, and will gain a reputation for being reliable and trustworthy. On the flip side, you’ll have to say yes to fewer things... but I believe the trade off will be worth it ;)