Try Hard, but Not That Hard. 85% Is the Magic Number for Productivity.

Are you giving it your all? Maybe that’s too much.

So many of us were raised in the gospel of hard work and max effort, taught that what we put in was what we got out. Now, some coaches and corporate leaders have a new message. To be at your best, dial it back a bit.

Trying to run at top speed will actually lead to slower running times, they say, citing fitness research. Lifting heavy weights until you absolutely can’t anymore won’t spark more muscle gain than stopping a little sooner, one exercise physiologist assured me.

The trick—be it in exercise, or anything—is to try for 85%. Aiming for perfection often makes us feel awful, burns us out and backfires. Instead, count the fact that you hit eight out of 10 of your targets this quarter as a win. We don’t need to see our work, health or hobbies as binary objectives, perfected or a total failure.

“I already messed it up,” Sherri Phillips would lament after missing one of her daily personal goals.

Last year, the chief operating officer of a Manhattan photography business began tracking metrics like her sleep quality and cardio time on an elaborate spreadsheet. It was only after she switched to aiming for 85% success over the course of a week that she stuck with her efforts, instead of giving up when she missed a mark.

“It’s a spectrum of success,” she says.

The benefits of doing less

Once upon a time, bosses who preached total optimisation might actually achieve it, says Greg McKeown, a business author and podcaster who’s written about why 85% is a sweet spot.

More recently, the available comparison points and choices in our lives have exploded. We read about someone else’s dream job on LinkedIn, watch a mom prepare a perfect lunch for her kid on TikTok, then click over to scroll through thousands of products on Amazon. Constant comparison often means no end result ever feels good enough. Even searching for, say, the best umbrella to buy can become a time-sucking quest.

“We will drain ourselves,” McKeown says. “It’s a bad strategy. It costs too much.”

Test out doing a little less. If you turn in that project without the extra slide deck, “Does anybody care?” McKeown asks. If you make a decision with only 85% of the information in hand, what’s the result? Notice the time you get back for other things.

“There’s a lot of inconsequential stuff that goes into going 100%,” says Steve Magness, an exercise physiologist who coaches executives and athletes on performance. When we care too much, even minutiae starts to seem “like an existential crisis,” he adds.

Sometimes, the harder we try, the worse we get, injuring ourselves or choking under pressure, Magness says. Quit while you’re ahead, and the sense that your whole self-worth isn’t wrapped up in this one moment can actually make you more likely to nail it.

Relaxed confidence

The effortless success so many of us crave often comes from a relaxed confidence and a tolerance for ambiguity.

When economist Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian gave one of his first major addresses to the media as chief economic adviser for the Indian government, he prepared but tried not to overthink it.

“It’s that Goldilocks balance,” says Subramanian, now an executive director at the International Monetary Fund based in Washington, D.C. “85% is not slacking.”

When two of his slides wouldn’t cue up at the last minute, he pushed away his nerves and reminded himself the speech would be OK even if it wasn’t perfect.

“I’ll wing it,” he told himself calmly. The presentation went just fine.

Just tough enough

Dialling in on the sweet spot of 85% can help us grow. In a 2019 paper, researchers used machine learning to try to find the ideal difficulty level to learn new things. The neural network they created, meant to mimic the human brain, learned best when it was faced with queries set to 85% difficulty, meaning it got questions right 85% of the time.

If a task is too hard, humans get demotivated, says Bob Wilson, an author of the study and associate professor of psychology and cognitive science at the University of Arizona. “If you never make any errors, you’re 100% accurate, well, you can’t learn from the mistakes.”

Ron Shaich, a founder and former chief executive of restaurant chain Panera, is skeptical of people who hit 100% on bonus targets or sales projections. He wonders if the goals are too low. They should be ambitious enough that you won’t always get there, he says.

Presiding over Panera’s quarterly earnings reports, he’d aim to exceed guidance eight out of 10 times. The same went for big goals at the company.

Now an investor, board member and author of a coming business book that stresses 80% equals success, Shaich is convinced most companies don’t even hit that number.

“They all talk about what they’re going to get done. Then they don’t do it,” he says. Reach 80% and, “you’re doing great.”

Know when to stop

Years ago, as a consultant at Bain, Grace Ueng learned the “80-20 rule.” The idea was to stop once you were 80% complete on a project, she says. That first burst of work often contained the real meat of the project.

Now a leadership coach and strategy consultant, Ueng recently took up piano. She practiced for hours and grimaced when she performed for her music group. Then she started doing more targeted exercises, like tackling small chunks of a piece instead of running through the whole thing again and again.

Before a recent performance, she read a book and went to church instead of putting in extra hours at the piano.

When it was time to perform, she played well—and actually enjoyed it.

“You have to have the wisdom,” she says, “to know when to stop.”

As Paris makes its final preparations for the Olympic games, its residents are busy with their own—packing their suitcases, confirming their reservations, and getting out of town.

Worried about the hordes of crowds and overall chaos the Olympics could bring, Parisians are fleeing the city in droves and inundating resort cities around the country. Hotels and holiday rentals in some of France’s most popular vacation destinations—from the French Riviera in the south to the beaches of Normandy in the north—say they are expecting massive crowds this year in advance of the Olympics. The games will run from July 26-Aug. 1.

“It’s already a major holiday season for us, and beyond that, we have the Olympics,” says Stéphane Personeni, general manager of the Lily of the Valley hotel in Saint Tropez. “People began booking early this year.”

Personeni’s hotel typically has no issues filling its rooms each summer—by May of each year, the luxury hotel typically finds itself completely booked out for the months of July and August. But this year, the 53-room hotel began filling up for summer reservations in February.

“We told our regular guests that everything—hotels, apartments, villas—are going to be hard to find this summer,” Personeni says. His neighbours around Saint Tropez say they’re similarly booked up.

As of March, the online marketplace Gens de Confiance (“Trusted People”), saw a 50% increase in reservations from Parisians seeking vacation rentals outside the capital during the Olympics.

Already, August is a popular vacation time for the French. With a minimum of five weeks of vacation mandated by law, many decide to take the entire month off, renting out villas in beachside destinations for longer periods.

But beyond the typical August travel, the Olympics are having a real impact, says Bertille Marchal, a spokesperson for Gens de Confiance.

“We’ve seen nearly three times more reservations for the dates of the Olympics than the following two weeks,” Marchal says. “The increase is definitely linked to the Olympic Games.”

Worried about the hordes of crowds and overall chaos the Olympics could bring, Parisians are fleeing the city in droves and inundating resort cities around the country.
Getty Images

According to the site, the most sought-out vacation destinations are Morbihan and Loire-Atlantique, a seaside region in the northwest; le Var, a coastal area within the southeast of France along the Côte d’Azur; and the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean.

Meanwhile, the Olympics haven’t necessarily been a boon to foreign tourism in the country. Many tourists who might have otherwise come to France are avoiding it this year in favour of other European capitals. In Paris, demand for stays at high-end hotels has collapsed, with bookings down 50% in July compared to last year, according to UMIH Prestige, which represents hotels charging at least €800 ($865) a night for rooms.

Earlier this year, high-end restaurants and concierges said the Olympics might even be an opportunity to score a hard-get-seat at the city’s fine dining.

In the Occitanie region in southwest France, the overall number of reservations this summer hasn’t changed much from last year, says Vincent Gare, president of the regional tourism committee there.

“But looking further at the numbers, we do see an increase in the clientele coming from the Paris region,” Gare told Le Figaro, noting that the increase in reservations has fallen directly on the dates of the Olympic games.

Michel Barré, a retiree living in Paris’s Le Marais neighbourhood, is one of those opting for the beach rather than the opening ceremony. In January, he booked a stay in Normandy for two weeks.

“Even though it’s a major European capital, Paris is still a small city—it’s a massive effort to host all of these events,” Barré says. “The Olympics are going to be a mess.”

More than anything, he just wants some calm after an event-filled summer in Paris, which just before the Olympics experienced the drama of a snap election called by Macron.

“It’s been a hectic summer here,” he says.

Hotels and holiday rentals in some of France’s most popular vacation destinations say they are expecting massive crowds this year in advance of the Olympics.
AFP via Getty Images

Parisians—Barré included—feel that the city, by over-catering to its tourists, is driving out many residents.

Parts of the Seine—usually one of the most popular summertime hangout spots —have been closed off for weeks as the city installs bleachers and Olympics signage. In certain neighbourhoods, residents will need to scan a QR code with police to access their own apartments. And from the Olympics to Sept. 8, Paris is nearly doubling the price of transit tickets from €2.15 to €4 per ride.

The city’s clear willingness to capitalise on its tourists has motivated some residents to do the same. In March, the number of active Airbnb listings in Paris reached an all-time high as hosts rushed to list their apartments. Listings grew 40% from the same time last year, according to the company.

With their regular clients taking off, Parisian restaurants and merchants are complaining that business is down.

“Are there any Parisians left in Paris?” Alaine Fontaine, president of the restaurant industry association, told the radio station Franceinfo on Sunday. “For the last three weeks, there haven’t been any here.”

Still, for all the talk of those leaving, there are plenty who have decided to stick around.

Jay Swanson, an American expat and YouTuber, can’t imagine leaving during the Olympics—he secured his tickets to see ping pong and volleyball last year. He’s also less concerned about the crowds and road closures than others, having just put together a series of videos explaining how to navigate Paris during the games.

“It’s been 100 years since the Games came to Paris; when else will we get a chance to host the world like this?” Swanson says. “So many Parisians are leaving and tourism is down, so not only will it be quiet but the only people left will be here for a party.”

Try Hard, but Not That Hard. 85% Is the Magic Number for Productivity.

To do the best work of your life, take it down a notch

The benefits of doing less

Relaxed confidence

Just tough enough

Know when to stop