Kill the Two Percenters

Gibson Biddle has a ruthless rule at Netflix: if a feature only works for 2% of customers, kill it. Don't add it. Remove it if it's already there.

Why? Because that 2% feature creates complexity for everyone. It's one more thing to explain, one more thing to maintain, one more thing that can break. And it distracts from what actually matters for the other 98%.

'If I launched something and it was only 2%, we called it scraping the barnacles. Just get rid of it.'

This is essential wisdom for parenting approaches.

That elaborate sleep training technique that worked once last month? Stop trying to make it happen. The perfect breakfast that only gets eaten without complaints 2% of the time? Let it go. The complicated reward chart that only motivates good behavior occasionally?

You're spending enormous energy on two percenters.

Biddle's insight: you want things that work for the majority of situations, most of the time. Simple beats complex. Consistent beats elaborate.

Find the approaches that work 70% or 80% of the time and double down on those. Stop chasing edge case solutions for problems that might be better solved by just accepting imperfection. Some barnacles need scraping.