Get More From Life by Understanding the 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule was discovered by Vifredo Pareto in 1895 who observed that 80% of the wealth in Italy was owned by 20% of the population and it followed that 80% of income was received by 20% of the people.

It has since been discovered that this statistic can be observed in any area of your business or life. For example, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers or 80% of your sales is generated by 20% of your marketing or 80% of problems or complaints come from 20% of your customers. The list is endless.

This is a useful statistic to know since if you know what or who the 20% is then you can deal with them accordingly. For example, if you know which 20% of your customers give you 80% of your business then you can nurture these customers.

Other examples include 20% of your employee’s produce 80% of your output or 20% give you 80% of your problems.

This is not a hard and fast rule but if you study the facts you will find that a minority is always creating a majority.

This doesn’t just apply to business. If you look at your daily habits, you will find plenty of areas where this 80/20 rule applies.

• 80% of your money goes on 20% of the things you buy
• 80% of your phone calls are made to 20% of the numbers you have in your phone
• 20% of your activities produce 80% of your results

Once you start to break down your life into 80/20 rules, the trick is to stop wasting time on all the activities that produce little satisfaction or results and focus on the activities that produce the best outcomes. Work on one area at a time. You can do this for literally anything. What would you like to work on first? Here are some more examples:-

•Hard drive - sort through your computer documents, comparing the last modified date for various major folders. Create a separate folder system where you can move these rarely used files. This will eliminate your computer clutter and make it far easier and faster to find the stuff you actually use.
• Home Appliances - Determine which appliances cause the most frustration, stress and break down the most. Once you’ve done this you have three options: learn to use the tool better to understand it and prevent stress, buy a new one or find a substitute that is less damage prone. Save yourself the headache and 80/20 your lawnmower.
• Habits - Figure out which behaviours (or lack thereof) contribute the most to your life. Exercise? Rising Early? Family Dinners? Use this as a basis for making new habits.
• Relationships - Look at your social circle and friends. Do a rough estimate of the amount of time and energy you invest in each relationship. Compare that to the amount of stress or satisfaction. You might find that certain relationships are toxic and others are valuable and should be invested in more.
• Food - Record your eating habits for a week. Calculate up the calories of the different items of food. Some treats contribute a high percentage of your calorie pie for no nutritional value, when other vices consumed in smaller portions take up only a sliver but still offer a tasty treat.
• Daily Time Log - Do a time log on your activities for an entire day. Record the stop and start point for any activity. Then broadly shuffle the different activities into categories. Figure out what parts of your day aren’t contributing to productivity, entertainment or personal happiness and cut them out.
• Work Tasks - Write down all the broad categories of tasks you do at your job. You can make a little table that shows the amount of hours spent at each category (say, 1 hr for E-mail, 1 hr for contacting clients, etc.) and on another column write down a value estimate for what percentage you believe it contributes to your productivity. Eliminate, simplify or delegate low %’s and focus on high %’s.

The most valuable tasks that you do each day are often the hardest and most complex but the reward for completing these tasks can be huge.

Of all the tasks on your to do list, work out which one will give you the biggest and best results. For all your tasks, ask yourself “is this task in the top 20% or of activities or the bottom 80%.

Time management is all about taking control over what you do next and your ability to choose between the important and none important tasks is the key to determine your success and happiness.

Make the decision today that you will spend more time on activities that will make a real difference in your life and less on those that won’t.


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