An Intro to the 80-20
Rule aka the Pareto Principle
The 80-20 Rule is also Called the Pareto Principle, named after an Italian economist, as Wikipedia has pointed out. The basic gist of the 80-20 rule is that 20% of anything, is often the part we probably should pay more attention to, but probably don't, for whatever reason.
Yet this 20% might just contain the most important stuff that what we've assumed to be less important than the other 80% or greater, that we've focused on and where we spend (waste!) most of our time and effort.
Basically, the 80-20 rule brings to light that we might be greatly lopsided and wrong in our thinking, decision-making and in our efforts and resource utilization. We might have deemed the wrong things as more significant, and did not deem the right things as significant, but instead have deemed them as insignificant.
80-20 is one of those rules that you should not avoid, break nor despise. To the contrary. This in one I know you will love, and grow quite fond of. Again, it's called the 80-20 rule and is one of the most important rules you'll ever learn for getting things done and for maximizing personal effectiveness.
I think the best way to describe the 80-20 rule is that it's an extremely important idea or concept that can truly help us work smarter, rather than harder. The 80-20 rule helps us see things in a different light, and hopefully in a better way than we've ever seen it before. It enlightens and informs us in a better way than our current view.
The 80-20 rule requires an open mind, as well as flexibility in our thinking rather than rigidity, as a pre-requisite. If you can't get past this hurdle, you'll become your own worst enemy and won't successfully learn or apply this outstanding and highly useful rile of life!
The 80-20 Rule Helps Us prioritize and Focus
One of the most important points here about the 80-20 rule is one of focus and prioritization. The 80-20 rule has as an assumption that you cannot simply focus on everything, all of the time. You cannot give 100% max effort 100% of the time in 100% of the things.
The 80-20 rule helps us prioritize, because otherwise, we might try to make everything a priority. And when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority! We just can't focus on everything. There have to be some choices and decisions. 80-20 is a tool to help.
Following the 80-20 Rule Has Positive and Multiplying Effects
If we want to multiply our output, multiply our efficiency and effectiveness, the 80-20 rule is a great way to do exactly that. The 80-20 rule helps us focus on 20% of what's effective and important, rather than 80% of what's not effective or important.
Likewise, the 80-20 Rule helps us not waste time on 80% of things that we might think are effective, but are actually ineffective. These are things that might only deserve 20% of our efforts and focus, or less. So we should know what these things are, right? The 80-20 rule tells us that, and then we must then seek out this knowledge!
For instance, say you're trying to learn something new, such as learning a new language. Instead of trying to learn everything in that language, the 80-20 rule would declare this:
The 80-20 rule requires an open mind, as well as flexibility in our thinking rather than rigidity, as a pre-requisite. If you can't get past this hurdle, you'll become your own worst enemy and won't successfully learn or apply this outstanding and highly useful rile of life!
The 80-20 Rule Helps Us prioritize and Focus
One of the most important points here about the 80-20 rule is one of focus and prioritization. The 80-20 rule has as an assumption that you cannot simply focus on everything, all of the time. You cannot give 100% max effort 100% of the time in 100% of the things.
The 80-20 rule helps us prioritize, because otherwise, we might try to make everything a priority. And when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority! We just can't focus on everything. There have to be some choices and decisions. 80-20 is a tool to help.
Following the 80-20 Rule Has Positive and Multiplying Effects
If we want to multiply our output, multiply our efficiency and effectiveness, the 80-20 rule is a great way to do exactly that. The 80-20 rule helps us focus on 20% of what's effective and important, rather than 80% of what's not effective or important.
Likewise, the 80-20 Rule helps us not waste time on 80% of things that we might think are effective, but are actually ineffective. These are things that might only deserve 20% of our efforts and focus, or less. So we should know what these things are, right? The 80-20 rule tells us that, and then we must then seek out this knowledge!
For instance, say you're trying to learn something new, such as learning a new language. Instead of trying to learn everything in that language, the 80-20 rule would declare this:
- Focus the majority (80% or more) of your efforts on learning the most important and common things found within that language.
- Focus on the 20% of things (or less) that matter the most in conversations you're most likely to have, every day
- Give 20% or less of your efforts towards anything else.
This is a much faster
as a highly focused way of learning, a great time saver!
Using the language example from above, the 80-20 Rule also says:
Since only 20% of the language is the most important part that you should learn, 80% is unimportant or not nearly as relevant, and therefore not really necessary to learn.
Focus on the 20% that matters, with 80% of our efforts, rather than focusing 100% of efforts on 100% of everything. This would spread us too thin.
Also, the 80-20 rule helps us to possibly use only 20% of efforts on the 80% that is not as important, so we don’t waste the majority of our resources on less important things. That is a key principle for effectiveness.
In the end, our smarter focus results in what can be called a "force multiplier" because it multiplies our efforts into a sort of "smart work factor" that is between 4-10 times more effective than any other way of doing it (but again we must focus on the most essential 20%, while using 80% of our efforts towards it, to achieve this output factor.)
Another Great 80-20 Rule
Example - Studying for an Exam
- Why spend 100% of your time studying 100% of everything? This is unrealistic.
- Why spend 80% of your efforts that's not as important or likely to be tested?
- Why spend 80% of your efforts studying stuff you might already know?
- Why not spend 80% of your efforts on 20% of the material that you don't know, and stop studying what you already do know?
- Why not spend 80% of your efforts on the material that is most likely to be tested, if you can determine what that might be? There is probably a way!
- Why not spend 80% of your efforts on the 20% of where you really need to? That's the bottom line!
Are We Doing The Wrong
Things or the Right Things?
The 80-20 rule also help us to focus on doing the right things, rather than doing the wrong things. It helps us to do the right things first, in the right way second, rather than just "doing things right" when they are not the right things.
We must do the right things, not just do things right. We can otherwise be doing the wrong things right, which though noble, is not smart. This is a very important distinction in life that I talked about before.
We must do the right things, not just do things right. We can otherwise be doing the wrong things right, which though noble, is not smart. This is a very important distinction in life that I talked about before.
The 80-20 rule helps us stay correctly focused in that regard, effectiveness first, efficiency second, and not ever the other way around nor ever efficiency, at the expense of effectiveness. When we do 80-20 thinking correctly we will also not do effectiveness at the expense of efficiency either.
80-20 thinking helps us re-focus on 20% of things we didn't know or think were effective, but might actually be more effective than the 80% we mistakenly focused on, because we thought it was the right stuff.
In end effect, we become more effective when we use the 8020 rule, and we learn to do better when it comes to making decisions for things such as:
80-20 thinking helps us re-focus on 20% of things we didn't know or think were effective, but might actually be more effective than the 80% we mistakenly focused on, because we thought it was the right stuff.
In end effect, we become more effective when we use the 8020 rule, and we learn to do better when it comes to making decisions for things such as:
- spending money
- wasting time
- conserving energy
- focusing effort
- understanding cause and effect
- staying efficient
- staying effective
Ultimately, all of this becomes a mind tool or set of tools that can helps us solve problems more effectively!
Next let's look at
exactly that - How the 80-20 Rule Can Help You Be More Effective
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