APPLYING THE PARETO PRINCIPLE (80/20 RULE) IN YIQUAN
Originally, the Pareto
Principle referred to the observation that 80% of Italy’s wealth belonged to
only 20% of the population. More generally, the Pareto Principle is the
observation (not law) that most things in life are not distributed evenly. It
can mean all of the following things:
·
20%
of the input creates 80% of the result
·
20%
of the workers produce 80% of the result
·
20%
of the customers create 80% of the revenue
·
20%
of the bugs cause 80% of the crashes
·
20%
of the features cause 80% of the usage
·
And
on and on…
What has this to do with
Yiquan, you might wonder? Well one of the founding pillars in the practice of
Yiquan is INTEGRITY. Simply put the whole body and mind must function as ONE
unit. However, this is easier said than done. Why? Simply because, we do the
exact OPPOSITE in our daily lives.
If you look at our body, there
are about 37 trillion cells in our body. Let’s us then imagine our body as a
company comprising of (for simplification) 100 employees. How often then do we
call upon each of these employees to perform our daily tasks? You’ll find that
the Pareto Principle can provide a rough guide for most individuals. Yes, we
probably rely heavily on 20 of these employees for our daily tasks. These 20
employees are chronically overworked, not given any leave, underpaid,
undernourished and ready to rebel at any time. These are the yellow to red
zones I wrote about earlier here.
What about the other 80
employees in the company? Well, they’re chilling most of the time not doing anything.
Before you think that’s a good thing, well… it’s not. Because they’re inactive
all of the time, these other 80 employees are fat, lazy, slow, weak, slothful,
sleepy etc. all of the time. If there’s an emergency, will you be able to
mobilize them? Not at all… You need to whip them into shape before you can use
them. And if you wait till an emergency before you mobilize them, well that’s
quite impossible. These are the grey to black zones in our body as in my post here.
Yiquan in essence is about
INTEGRITY, to move the body and mind as a SINGLE unit. Think about it, if all
of the 100 employees are fit and healthy. And all of them share the workload
equally, are given due recognition and appropriate leave as and when necessary…
How do you think the company will perform? I would expect the productivity and
profitability of the company to soar!
So, if you think of this
analogy and consider how you are using or I’d rather say ab(using) the body,
things become rather clear. If you observe how you use your body, you should
find that the Pareto Principle fits how you use your body. Possibly you are
only using 20% part of your body to do 80% of your day to day tasks. These will
become an issue once you reach middle age and will become chronic over time
unless you change your ways.
Observations include:
·
Using
the dominant hand to perform almost all of your daily tasks. If you’re right
handed, your typical tasks using your right hand could include: washing your
face, brushing your teeth, flushing the toilet, wiping your ass, picking the
glass, using the spoon, taking the keys, opening the door, unlocking the car,
picking up the phone, texting on the phone. And we haven’t even got to our
office yet.
·
Conversely,
you rarely use your less dominant hand to do any tasks unless it’s something
you need to use both hands with. As you rarely use it, you’ll find it exceeding
difficult to use it for anything reasonably taxing. Try brushing your teeth
with your less dominant hand. Or using it with a scissors or a knife. Or even
something simple like picking up a glass. It feels alien and uncomfortable.
·
Using
front part of our body excessively including tilting our heads forward. This is
an unavoidable aspect of our daily lives especially if you’re working in an
office. We sit in front of computers all day. We text and use our smartphones
all the time. We deal with paperwork while sitting in our desk hunched over.
·
Conversely,
try using the rear side of your body. Try to flex your back muscles. Try to perform
a shoulder flexibility test as per below. You’ll find some difficulty if you’ve
rarely used the rear part of your body.
·
Using
the dominant leg to carry most of the weight in the body. If you observe
closely, you will find that most of the time, you will rely on a certain leg
more to bear the weight of the body. It may be not too pronounced but you will
tend to shift the weight of the gravity on the dominant side more. This starts
as a bad habit when you’re young and overtime, it becomes second nature.
·
Conversely,
try shifting your weight to the less dominant leg. You’ll find it feels alien
and uncomfortable. Possibly, the less dominant leg will tire out quickly.
Better yet, if you look closely at your leg, it might be the more dominant leg
is much more muscular than the less dominant leg. The more pronounced it is,
the more serious the postural problem you may develop in the future.
Most of
the common ailments that affect those middle aged and elderly people especially
problems with the knees, backaches and hunchback problems are caused by these
minor postural problems that become chronic over time. All these are caused by
excessive use of dominant or active parts of the body (20%) that do most of our
daily work. The other inactive or dormant parts of the body (80%) are left to
rot and idle.
Yiquan is a internal martial
art that forces you to be AWARE of these issues and to consciously and with
deliberate INTENT take control of your body. It’s as if a new CEO is in charge
of the company. The 20 employees are given due recognition and rewards. More
importantly, they’re given leave to rest and recuperate. The other 80 employees
are to undergo a strict regime to training to whip them into shape. Then all
100 of them are forced to work in unison as a single unit to accomplish
whatever tasks is set by the new CEO. It’s as simple as that!