The 80% rule (and why you might be focusing on the wrong thing)
Read time: 5 minutes
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The 80% rule (and why you might be focusing on the wrong thing)
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that no one talks about enough.
It’s not the tiredness that comes from doing too much. It’s the tiredness that comes from doing all the right things… and still feeling like something essential is missing.
You’ve optimised your calendar. You’ve built the strategy. You’ve shown up, delivered, networked, planned. From the outside, everything looks assembled. But inside, there’s a quiet voice that says… is this it?
I think I know what that feeling is pointing to.
We’ve been chasing the wrong 20%.
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Most of us were taught – implicitly, through years of performance reviews and promotions and praise – that success lives in the visible stuff. The plan. The pitch. The tactic. The perfectly worded email. The networking strategy. The personal brand framework.
And those things matter. I’m not dismissing them.
But they’re the surface layer. The finishing coat on a wall that hasn’t been properly built yet.
What actually holds everything up is quieter. Less glamorous. Rarely posted about. And almost impossible to fake.
It’s the 80% that most people skip over, because it doesn’t look like productivity. It looks like pausing. Like listening. Like choosing, again and again, to do the slow thing instead of the fast thing.
Here’s what I mean:
- Self-Awareness is 80% noticing, 20% changing.
We are so quick to want to fix ourselves. To optimise, to upgrade, to become the next version. But real self-awareness doesn’t begin with change – it begins with stillness. With sitting long enough in a moment to actually name what’s happening inside you.
What is this feeling trying to tell me? What does this reaction reveal about what I value? What would it look like to respond from my most grounded self, rather than my most reactive one?
You can’t shift what you haven’t first seen. The noticing is not the soft part of the work… it is the work. Change, when it comes from that place of honest awareness, almost takes care of itself.
- Happiness is 80% mindset, 20% circumstances.
I spent years waiting working hard towards the title, the salary, the recognition. The moment that I would finally feel – I got there! I am happy! As if joy were something that would be handed to me once I’d earned enough of the right things.
It doesn’t work that way. We know this. And yet.
The women I find most luminous – most genuinely alive in who they are – aren’t the ones who have the most. They’re the ones who’ve decided not to outsource their contentment to things outside their control. That decision, made quietly and repeatedly, is what joy actually looks like.
- Achieving is 80% action, 20% planning.
I love a beautiful strategy. I do. There is real pleasure in mapping out the vision, the steps, the action plan. But I’ve watched so many brilliant women stay in the planning phase far longer than they needed to – because planning feels safe, and action feels like exposure.
At some point, you have to stop preparing for the leap and actually jump. Not recklessly. But trustingly. The clarity you’re waiting for? It mostly comes after you begin, not before.
- Communication is 80% listening, 20% speaking.
The women who command rooms are rarely the ones who speak the most. They’re the ones who listen in a way that makes you feel like the most important person in the room.
Real listening – full attention, no mental rehearsal of your next line, no eyes drifting to see who else just walked in – is one of the rarest things you can offer another human being. In a world of half-listeners, your full presence is its own kind of power. It is, without exaggeration, the most underrated leadership skill I know.
- Influence is 80% trust, 20% tactics.
We spend so much time on the tactics of influence. The positioning. The storytelling frameworks. The executive presence checklists. And yes, craft matters.
But people don’t follow your strategy. They follow you. They follow who you are when the strategy fails. Who you are when you’re tired. Who you are when someone else gets the credit. Trust isn’t built in grand moments. It’s built in the hundred small ones no one is watching – and everyone remembers.
- Personal Growth is 80% practice, 20% learning.
We live in the most resource-rich era for growth that has ever existed. Books, podcasts, workshops, courses – the wisdom is everywhere, and it’s extraordinary.
And yet knowing is not the same as growing.
Doing – imperfectly, repeatedly, in the actual conditions of your real life… that’s where the transformation happens. Practice is the whole point.
- Relationships are 80% giving, 20% receiving.
The most enduring professional relationships I’ve seen – the ones that weather setbacks, career pivots, years of silence and then easy reconnection, are built on a foundation of generosity. Not strategic generosity. Not give-to-get. Just: I see what you need right now, and I have it to give.
That kind of relationship becomes the net that catches you. You can’t manufacture it when you need it. You have to have been building it long before.
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None of this is complicated. But simple is not the same as easy.
Choosing the 80% asks something of us. It asks us to slow down in a world that rewards speed. To go inward in a culture that celebrates the external. To do the unglamorous, invisible work… and trust that it’s compounding underneath the surface, even when there’s no applause.
That’s a conscious choice. Made again, every day.
But here’s what I know: the women who make that choice – who tend to the roots instead of only polishing the leaves… they’re the ones who don’t just succeed. They sustain. They lead with something real. They build something that lasts.
And that, to me, is what levelling up actually means.
So tell me: which one of these resonates most with where you are right now, and what would it look like to truly lean into that 80% this week?
Invitation: Join Our Next Focus Group (Limited Spots)
We’re opening up a few intimate spaces over the next couple weeks to have real, unfiltered conversations with women from our community. We’ll explore:
- Where you’re in your career right now
- What’s feeling hard or unclear
- Where do you need more support
You’ll walk away with the opportunity to directly shape what we build at Shenomics next – a new learning experience designed for women like you, launching later this year.
No preparation needed. Just show up as you are.
We’re keeping this intentionally small – only 10 women per session, on a first-come, first-served basis.
Register below:
Focus Group Discussion – May 16
With warmth,
Bhavna