80 Percenting: Putting it To The Test!

Hello Nerdfighters!

I was recently listening to some episodes of Dear Hank and John from late 2017 and I came across a particularly brilliant conversation. In Episode 101: Knit Like a Mofo (one of my personal favorite pod titles), Hank and John Green discuss the concept of "80 percenting". This conversation happens in the first few minutes of the pod when John was discussing how much effort he was putting into finishing the edits on his yet-to-be-released novel Turtles All The Way Down. Here's Hank's response:

"John, do you know about 80 percenting?... 80 percenting is the idea that the first 80 percent of the work is actually only 20 percent of the work and the last 20 percent is like 80 percent of the work. So getting 80 percent of the way there is 20 percent and then getting the last 20 percent is like 80 percent of the work. And so what you should do is just forget about that last 20 percent."

Okay. That was complicated, Hank. I'm going to have to call you out on that one. BUT, basically what I got out of it is that you save a lot of effort (80% of the effort in fact) if you only do 80% of the work because in that case you're actually only spending 20% of the effort. Still confusing? I'm sorry.

Anyhow, That sounds like a nice life. In fact, John claims to "80 percent" 99% of his professional life, including every Vlogbrothers video in recent history, and those videos are still great. So if I take John's success as a model, I should be able to get through life just fine only doing 80% of things. Right?

Let's find out.
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To get a full idea of what 80 percenting looked like, I decided to 80% my way through 5 key tasks that make up parts of my daily life. Here's what happened.

1. Watching Videos

I watch YouTube videos regularly. If there's a day I don't go on YouTube at least once, my friends start to get concerned. In fact, sometimes it feels like I spend 80% of my life there. It's not healthy. Anyways, that's besides the point. One of my favorite YouTube Channels is Vlogbrothers. (Obviously. You probably saw that coming.) Vlogbrothers is where I learned to love John Green, Hank Green, and everything that Nerdfighteria is. And what would be better than to apply Hank's advice to his own channel?

I reached out to my Twitter followers and asked for a suggestion of a random Vlogbrothers video of their choice. My first response was from Sara (@alicornfeathers), who suggested "Definitely Not a Pecan Orchard: A Pizzamas Question Tuesday". I absolutely love this video so I'm glad this was the choice. It's not only a reunion video, but also a Question Tuesday, a tour video, a Pizzamas video, and it's particularly hilarious.

So here are the details: This video is 3 minutes and 58 seconds long. 80% of that is 3 minutes and 10.4 seconds. So I set out to watch the video until 3:10 to see what I could get out of it. (In the process of watching it, I actually got a little distracted and almost forgot to not watch the last 20%. BUT I realized this at 3:08, so I caught it just in time.)

At 3:10, Hank is in the middle of explaining why birds constantly fly around him during the tour, as described by his impromptu haiku just seconds before. But, seeing as I had to stop watching, I will never know why this phenomena exists (okay, yeah, I have seen the video before but that was 5 months ago so I kinda forgot what happened). Also the screenshot at 3:10 is quite enjoyable, so that was fun.

And the final verdict? This one was kinda sad. I didn't want to stop watching the video, and if I take Hank's advice even further, I had really only seen 20% of the content even though I watched 80% of the video, so I'm really missing out on the majority of the fun here. But, like I said, the screenshot is great, so it has that going for it. 

2. Eating

Eating is a universal thing. Most of us do it every day. But how would my day go if I could only eat 80% of my food? I decided to do a mini-test here and I looked at the portion sizes of two of my favorite snacks: Cheez-Its and Sour Patch Kids (or actually Sour Patch Bunnies in this case, apparently Target is prepping for Easter).

According to the back of the box, one serving of Extra Toasty Cheez-Its is 27 crackers. 80% of that is 21.6 crackers. And for the Sour Patch, one serving is 16 pieces. 80% of that is 12.8. 

So I don't typically pay much attention to portion size, but according to what I believe are my normal eating habits, 21.6 Cheez-Its definitely looked like less than I would typically eat in one snack session, and 12.8 Sour Patch seemed like more. But of course this changes based on my hunger level. I could see myself eating 80% of an entire box of Cheez-Its on a particularly desperate day.

And the final verdict? This wasn't terrible. I will admit that I did eat the Cheez-Its pretty soon after dinner, so I wasn't starving, but I was satisfied with 21.6. However, I know that this may not have been the case at another time. And for the Sour Patch, I actually found myself wanting more. When I finished my last one, I had a longing for more. Maybe the extra 3.2 would have done it. I'll never know... (A quick caveat here: Unfortunately Hank's philosophy doesn't work with calories. In that case, I would be happy to eat only 80% of things if I only got 20% of the calories.)

3. Drawing

Okay, I'm not artistic and don't really draw ever, but this was a stand-in for doing homework. I'm not ready to 80 percent that just yet. Like I said, I don't really draw on the regular, but I do own a mini Harry Potter coloring book for those times when I really need to do something with my hands. When I was looking for something to color, I saw that I had yet to color in the Hogwarts crest on the first page and I noticed that it was relatively sectioned off, which would make it easy to section off and calculate percents. Thus, I broke the picture down into these 5 categories:

1. Motto/Banner
• Motto is 34 characters, 80% is 27.2
• Banner is approximately 16 cm, 80% is 12.8 cm
2. House Animals
• 4 animals, 80% is 3.2
3. House Colors
• 4 colors, 80% is 3.2
4. Corner Decorations
• 8 segments, 80% is 6.4 ( I messed up this one and did 7.4.... oops)
5. Crest Decorations/Embellishments
• There's no easy way to measure this one, so I just guessed

And the final verdict? This one is a mixed bag. On one hand, the final picture is quite unsatisfying. There are parts that just unappealing and it looks very confusing. On the other hand, my nerdy engineering brain enjoyed being able to section the picture off and do all of the calculations necessary to make it as accurate as possible. I guess that means that the journey was much better than the destination.

4. Making the Bed

Making the bed is definitely something I try to do every day, and I do enjoy the feeling of coming back to my apartment to a nice, tidy room. That being said 80 percenting this wasn't particularly challenging for me. All I did here was just attempt to put in only 80% of the effort I typically would (which isn't a lot considering I was exhausted and had just woken up for an 8 AM lecture). 

Normally, I would make sure the comforter was all the way up to the top and the pillows were aligned, but I wouldn't do much with the random red blanket seeing as it doesn't even begin to match with the rest of the items to begin with so that wouldn't help with aesthetics all that much anyways (this is just what happens when you collect random bedding pieces across 4 years of college). 

And the final verdict? I probably won't do this again. Like I said, making the bed doesn't take much effort to begin with, and when I came back after class, the first thing I did was make it the rest of the way. I really only delayed the inevitable here.

5.... 

WAIT! In the words of Hank Green:

"I should just make a video on 80 percenting and it should just end 80% of the way through."

Sorry, Hank. I'm stealing your idea.

(Check in next week for the last 20% of my 80% adventure.)

UPDATE: As of 3/8/2018, the final 20% was uploaded! Go check it out here: 80 Percenting: The Finale!