Use the Pareto Principle to give yourself time

The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, is the idea that 20% of your efforts bring 80% of your results. The idea applies to many things in life…

  • You wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time

  • 20% of your customers make 80% of the complaints

  • 20% of your customers are 80% of your revenue (maybe not the same 20% as are making all the complaints)

  • 20% of the work you do give 80% of the results you achieve

It makes sense to focus your attention on these most critical tasks at work and at home. Identify what inputs have the most impact and prioritise those, and you can save yourself spending fruitless time and energy on the rest.

You can save a lot of time and make much faster progress by focusing on the most effective tasks.

Follow this process:

  1. Identify your work goals. It may sound silly, but often we get in and work away without stopping to consider what our goals actually are. Is your main goal this morning really to reply to whoever happens to have emailed you overnight? What specifically are you aiming to accomplish at work? It’s imperative to be aware of your goals. Otherwise, you have no way of knowing whether your efforts are taking you in a direction towards which you want to travel.

  2. Pick the most important goals. Not all goals are created equal. Think about which goals are most important to you, your boss, and your organisation. Maybe you can achieve all of your goals, but more often you can’t. Which of your identified goals are most important?

    Identify all of the tasks that will help to achieve those goals. Think of every single task that can be done to achieve your goals. Write down every idea you can think of. For example:

    • What is every single thing you could do to reduce the expenses in your department?

    • What is every single thing you could do to boost sales?

    • Be open minded and creative. The best idea might be something you normally wouldn’t consider.

  3. Prioritise those tasks. Every action has a different effect. Some actions accomplish a lot more than others.

    • Look at the goal and look at the proposed actions. Which actions will have the greatest impact on achieving that goal?

    • Put all the actions in order from most impactful to least.


    Create a simple spread sheet with a column for “Activity” and a column for “Weekly Hours”. In each row of the Activity column, note what you will be doing in the course of a typical week, and in the Weekly Hours column, record how long you expect to spend doing it. For example:

… and so on. Be sure to include the little things (filing receipts?). When the total of your “Weekly Hours” column hits the number of hours you want to work in a week (30, 40… even 60 if that’s your thing), stop. That’s all your time gone. Now… time for some ruthless reprioritisation.

5. Put your focus on those most important tasks. In theory, the top 20% of the actions you’ve identified are worth your time and effort. Most of the remaining 80% should be ignored.

  • Remember that in your situation, it might not be 80-20. It might be 90-10. Or it might be 85-15. It’s simply a ratio of options to results. The point is that a few options matter much more than the others.

Revisit your spreadsheet and adjust so that you are spending more time on the activities that deliver outsized results and less on the things that make you feel busy but don’t actually deliver much impact.

6. Outsource what you can. The more time and effort that can be applied toward those tasks in the top 20%, the more successful you’ll be. Success will come quicker, too.

  • One person can do a lot, but five people can do a lot more. Look for help. In fact, sometimes the best help is outside the organisation. It might be worthwhile to hire additional help temporarily or permanently.

7. Stay the course. Focus on those critical tasks and you’ll see great progress.

What about other areas of your life? Think about how you can apply the same 80/20 principle to other aspects of your life:

  • Health

  • Fitness

  • Friendships

  • Keeping your house in order

  • Building your fortune

  • Mastering a new language

  • Being a good neighbour

What part of your life do you most want to change for the better? What are the most important actions you can take in each area of your life?

You can be pretty successful at many things if you identify the most important tasks and avoid wasting your time on anything else.

Until next week,

Take care of yourself and others

Madeleine

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Madeleine Shaw