CHAPTER 16: THE PARETO PRINCIPLE AND STURGEON’S LAW Most of us have experienced that discouraging feeling when we have put in hours of work, but the project doesn’t turn out the way we had hoped. In this chapter, you will learn why it’s normal to devote so much time to your work but still feel as if you haven’t gotten anywhere with it. Additionally, you will learn why accepting this truth will motivate you to develop an even greater level of self-discipline. To achieve this motivation, we will study two approaches—The Pareto Principle and Sturgeon’s Law. STURGEON’S LAW Theodore Sturgeon was a science fiction author, and in 1958 he wrote an article for Venture magazine. He had become frustrated at the way critics had labeled the science fiction genre as low quality. He argued that even though there was probably some truth in a lot of science fiction work being a low-quality genre, it’s possible to say the same thing about everything else. His statement became known as Sturgeon’s Law. In recent years, philosopher Daniel Dennett stated that Sturgeon’s Law was one of the seven key tools for critical thinking, which is evidence that it is still relevant for writers and academics today.