an unspecified but discrete amount of effort or energy, taken from the word used generically to indicate the power of a computer processor, which is typically measured in cycles per second (hertz), each one representing a single operation; an example usage: “I wouldn’t burn too many cycles on that analysis Phil, let’s just 80-20 it and move on”; this term is often employed with respect to lower-value tasks; used when you wish to analogize human beings to a server farm