(Here is part 2 of my “report” on my recent trip to Amsterdam. ~sg)

On Sunday (7/1), my week of classes began. We met for our daily singing sessions in a lovely space called De Roos (The Rose).

My roommate Sarah and I walked to the park the first day and only got a little bit lost because it turns out De Roos is located in the Vondelpark. (The Vondelpark is a 120-acre park within the city).

De Roos has several rooms (we had our assigned space for the week), as well as a cafe, gift shop and lovely outdoor patio. (I ate lunch on the patio almost every day. *smile*)

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The staff were very kind to us (even when we were boisterous), from my front desk buddy Ruben to the lovely and efficient young woman (whose name I never learned *frown*) who worked in the cafe and told me on the day of our concert, “Good luck! You look beautiful.”

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We spent the first day getting musically reacquainted by working in duets, trios and quartets. Here’s a short excerpt from a quartet I created with Rahel, Juerg and Paula.

[audio:http://songtaneous.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/2011-08-01-quartet.mp3|titles=2011-08-01-quartet]

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Afterwords, we went into the Vondelpark for an impromptu (dare I say improvised? *grin*) picnic of take-out Thai food — Holland is geographically close to a lot of Indonesian countries so they have a lot of Asian food there — and afterwords headed to Vertigo Cafe (also in the park) for a nightcap. It stays light until after 10pm so it was easy to be out quite late without really knowing it. *smile*)

Lucky for us, Vertigo was situated conveniently between De Roos and the Vondelkerk, our performance venue. (Especially since the two days it rained during the week were the days of our public community singing event and our showcase performance.)

A couple of weeks ago (where does the time GO?!), I promised to share some audio from my rehearsal for my Guthrie gig with you.

As I hope you know, dear reader, I take the promises I make to you in this blog seriously. Probably more seriously than you require. *smile*

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(Before I digress, here is your audio.)

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled blog post …

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Since I was already posting on Monday (rather than Sunday night), I decided to “bang out” an audio post from my rehearsal recordings before moving onto my other web tasks for today — backing up my blog and web site files, updating my blog software, designing my student newsletter (more info on that soon), and updating my facebook fan page. A short and sweet update and then onto the rest of my day.

Hah!

I spent nearly three hours editing a 4-1/2-minute segment of audio! Not to mention the time writing about it and sending the email.

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Please understand, I absolutely think you are worth every minute of the time it took to write and edit this post, including the time I spent editing the audio.

But the experience of writing this post and editing the audio got me thinking about the 80-20 rule (also known as the Pareto Principle) and how I’d failed to follow it.

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In my case, I’m using the variation of Pareto’s principle that states that 80% of the value of this audio clip for you, came from 20% of the time I spent on it.

Maybe 10% of the time spent was recording the rehearsals in the first place and archiving them on my computer. Another couple percent to convert the files into a format small enough for you to stream on the web.

The bulk of the time I spent came from my decision to edit the audio for you. Presto-change-o, a 20-minute project became a three-hour project just like that.

(While I like to think I added value for you, I’m not sure it three hours’ worth. *smile*)

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So I have decided to use the 80-20 rule as a “good enough” rule. (My apologies to Signore Pareto.)

In other words …

Once you do 20% of the work, it’s a good idea to stop and evaluate how much of the remaining 80% of work you should do to make whatever you’re doing good enough.

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Not excellent. Not perfect. Not superior to all blog posts with audio clips that have ever been or ever will be written.

Just finished, complete.

You know, good enough.

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When you are in school, your level of effort and the quality of the finished product matter. (Okay, it mattered to me. *grin*)

There is A work and there is C work.

(And F’s for no work or really bad work.)

Guess what?

In the “real” world, most of the work is pass/fail.

You get credit for doing it. You get labeled lame for not.

80% of the time (*smile*), good enough gets the job done.

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How about you? Are you spending 80 to get 20?

Striving for an A+ when the assigment is pass/fail?

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P.S. I’m headed out of town for the holiday weekend so I’ll post again June 3.

I spent the past week singing, singing, singing so I didn’t do much writing (writing, writing). *smile*

Tuesday, I sang with my friend Ann Potter at the MCTC faculty recital.

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Thursday, I joined the women at Honoring Women Worldwide for a profound evening discussing health and spirituality. A bonus for me is that my singer friend Sara Thomsen joined me (and I got to sing one of her great songs!).

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And then Saturday night, I joined Trio Tipo for a really fun set at the Grand Opening of John’s Pizza Cafe. They were so great to us and made us feel very appreciated and welcome. (I love venues that support live music!) My cup runneth over when I sang a cappella and everyone in the place clapped along.