16 things I wish they had taught me in school (or I just would like to have known earlier in my life)...

I am 43 now. I don't think about the past or regret things much.

But sometimes I wish that I had known some of things I have learned over the last few years a bit earlier.


Some of these 16 things in this read my teachers / parents - probably spoke about in class.

But I forgot about them or didn't pay much attention.

So here are 16 things:

1. The 80/20 rule.
This is one of the best ways to make better use of your time.

The 80/20 rule - also known as The Pareto Principle - basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities. 

So a lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

You can just drop - or vastly decrease the time you spend on - a whole bunch of things.

And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

2. Parkinson's Law.

You can do things quicker than you think. This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you'll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you'll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.

So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven't overcomplicated or overpolished things. 

This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what's in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

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