The 80/20 rule is not an entirely new concept.

I’ve read about it in a few different incarnations:

There is David Roche’s book called, The Church of 80% Sincerity, which posits that we need to be sincere 80% of the time and not sweat the 20% of the time when we screw up (clearly I’m paraphrasing). It’s a great book for recovering perfectionists. Not to mention that David is a very cool guy.

Then there is the theory that one can eat healthily at least 80% of the time, so that the 20% less-healthy indulgences won’t really matter.

But when I read this Georgia Straight newspaper article, I was struck with another interesting use of this ratio.

The Tzu Chi foundation suggests that their volunteers and/or disciples offer 20% of what they would otherwise spend in a day, and donate that 20% to charity. If you read the article you will see that it started in Taiwan with people so poor that they had no cash to offer, so instead they donated uncooked rice to a box to help feed the poor. They ate 80% of what they normally would in order to make that 20% donation.

Gary Ho is the Vancouver CEO of the Tzu Chi Foundation. In the aforementioned Georgia Straight article he is quoted, “People misunderstand and think that we share the rest of the rice meal with others,” he stated. “It’s not like this. It’s the money we save [by not consuming] that we give to others.”

Ho added that…this way of life helps him lose weight and avoid indigestion.

Well check it out! This version of the 80-20 rule dovetails, and ends up overlapping, rather nicely with the 80/20 healthy eating plan so that you can consume and/or eat less, feel better, look great and donate more.

Proving once again that anytime we do good, we’re ultimately being selfish.  With this method, not only do I get to feel good about what I’ve done but I’ll end up losing my muffin top too! Oh yeh, baby…

I like this idea of an overall 20% reduction morphing into a daily donation. I think it would offer me more of a day-by-day awareness of giving, more so than the usual lump sum donations for various charities (which is still, quite obviously (!) a very good thing).

So, tomorrow if I skip a Starbucks treat or decide I don’t really need that new shirt, or pick regular mushrooms over Portabellos and then donate that ‘saved’ money to Kiva.org…hmmm…a few bucks each day would add up to some good daily donations, but at the same time, it would be relatively painless, non?

What about you? Do you have a different donation plan?