I have this theory that 99% of work that you do is useless. You still have to do it because it’s iterating your way to the 1% that is useful. But, in an ideal world, if you are omniscient, you would just cut to the 1%. - Naval Ravikant

I was quite skeptical the first time I heard of these words. This guy is after clout and clicks for saying something disingenuous like this, I told myself. It was hard to believe and accept that much of what I was doing are being wasted.

But since then and through the years of listening and reading the sage advice of angel investor and philosopher Naval Ravikant, I have a better appreciation of what he means with this statement.

Naval's theory follows the same principles of the Pareto Rule - the vital few determine majority of the results - but much more pronounced over a lifetime in terms of the accumulation of choices and actions we make. Knowing that 1% of our actions will dwarf all other actions will change our perspective about choices and decision making.

So my take on this is not to not take it literally. 99% of what we are doing are not useless. These 99% help us accomplish short-term goals but these actions are not the most optimal over the long term.

The second part of Naval's quote then reminds us that while much of what we are doing could be considered useless in the bigger scheme of things, we still have to go through these. This is because we don't have the "omniscient" ability to predict what those 1% are going to be in our life. By experimenting and iterating constantly, we bring ourselves closer to our 1%.

The takeaway: if we always bear in mind these ideas - 1% of our actions make the most of impact over a lifetime and iteration helps us get to the 1% faster - we can be a lot more selective and strategic in our choices while still maintaining a strong bias for action and learning.