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The 80/20 Rule is one of the most helpful of all
concepts of time and life management.
It is also called the “Pareto Principle” after
its founder, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto,
who first wrote about it in 1895. Pareto noticed
that people in his society seemed to divide
naturally into what he called the “vital few”,
the top 20 percent in terms of money and influence,
and the “trivial many”, the bottom 80 percent.
He later discovered that virtually all economic
activity was subject to this principle as well.
For example, this principle says that 20 percent
of your activities will account for 80 percent
of your results, 20 percent of your customers will
account for 80 percent of your sales, 20 percent of
your products or services will account for 80 percent
of your profits, 20 percent of your tasks will account
for 80 percent of the value of what you do, and so on.
This means that if you have a list of ten items to do,
two of those items will turn out to be worth five or
ten times or more than the other eight items put together.
Number of Tasks versus Importance of Tasks
Here is an interesting discovery. Each of the ten
tasks may take the same amount of time to accomplish.
But one or two of those tasks will contribute five or
ten times the value of any of the others.
Often, one item on a list of ten tasks that you have
to do can be worth more than all the other nine items
put together. This task is invariably the frog that
you should eat first.
Focus on Activities, Not Accomplishments
The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often
the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards
for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous.
For this reason, you must adamantly refuse to work on tasks
in the bottom 80 percent while you still have tasks in the
top 20 percent left to be done.
Before you begin work, always ask yourself,
“Is this task in the top 20 percent of my
activities or in the bottom 80 percent?”
The hardest part of any important task is getting
started on it in the first place. Once you actually
begin work on a valuable task, you will be naturally
motivated to continue. A part of your mind loves to
be busy working on significant tasks that can really
make a difference. Your job is to feed this part of
your mind continually.
Motivate Yourself
Just thinking about starting and finishing an
important task motivates you and helps you to
overcome procrastination. Time management is
really life management, personal management.
It is really taking control of the sequence of
events. Time management is having control over
what you do next. And you are always free to
choose the task that you will do next. Your ability
to choose between the important and the unimportant
is the key determinant of your success in life and work.
Effective, productive people discipline themselves
to start on the most important task that is before
them. They force themselves to eat that frog,
whatever it is. As a result, they accomplish vastly
more than the average person and are much happier
as a result.
This should be your way of working as well.
