How the 80-20 Rule Can Help You Be More Effective #8020

How the 80-20 Rule Can Help You Be More Effective

In my other article entitled "What is the 80-20 Rule and Why is it so Useful?” I talked about what the 80-20 rule, or Pareto principle is and gave some basic examples of how it can help make you more effective. This article is a continuation of that first article, and is an important concept for maximizing personal effectiveness and getting things done.

Are You "Living 80-20" And Producing Max Output with Minimal Effort (input)?

Like I said before, the 80-20 rule for me is always in the back of my mind when I look at anything and everything I do. What I mean is, I am always asking if there is a way I can do things better, in light of what the 80-20 rule often tells us is sub-optimal. I call this 80-20 living, or 'living 80-20".

Others relate this 80-20 living to GTD - "Getting Things Done" or using "Zen Habits", or maybe even the "4-hour Work Week." All of these are similar in that they utilize the 80-30 principles and concepts to help us be more efficient and effective, and turn the output maximization on its head, so max output with minimal effort can be achieved.

Once you look at things through the lens of 80-20 Living, your life will improve because the 80-20 rule helps you find a major way to improve your life personally and professionally. In fact, 80-20 living is contagious, and soon others around you will use these living 80-20 concepts to increase their output and maximize their personal effectiveness.

In fact, when you start 80-20 living, you'll find the following happen:

• You'll do things smarter and more effectively
• You'll simplify your life
• You'll spend your time on worthwhile and meaningful things
• You'll become more effective
• You'll accomplish more and waste less time
• You'll require less effort to accomplish more output
• You'll spend more time on the most important things
• You'll spend less time on the less-important things

In a time of information overload and social media overload, the 80-20 rule will help us to filter through all of the nose and clutter of this big data and get to the heart of what's most important. If for no other reason, the 80-20 rule must help us focus on the essentials, and discard the non-essentials. So what are some additional example for how we could use the 80-20 rule?

Greater Awareness of our Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities and Threats

80-20 thinking can help us re-examine some incorrect assumptions as well as highlight some things we're not aware of, that are nonetheless very important, to make a smarter decision.

By using the 80-20 rule, we should assume that we are not necessarily doing the right things or doing things right. Re-read what I just said. Doing the right things is the first priority. We must identify what those are.

Second, we must then do them right - in the most efficient way. We must be open to what the facts and data tell us, to correct our focus and thinking in many areas. For instance, the 80-20 rule may help us to see some of the following:

20% (or less) of your efforts make you money, 80% (or more) don't!

What does this tell you? For me, it makes me want to find out where I should spend more effort, and where I may just be wasting my time. I would want to flip this equation, where I would ensure 80% (or more) of my efforts are what made me money. I would home in on the specifics that are most important to maximize my output and effectiveness.

20% (or less) of the people in this country have 80% (or more) of the wealth and power

This tells me the other 80% only have 20% and probably much less. This would help to see who our government should focus on helping, versus who is often does focus on instead (i.e. the common ordinary people, the lower and middle class, not just the privileged elite or special interests they seem to give 80% or more of their effort, skill, attention and allegiance to, right?)

20% of the e-mails you get is actually worth your time, the other 80% is just junk or vaguely important information.

This will help you see where you need to focus your energies and where you'd waste most of your time. The key point is that we need to identify wasted effort and then stop doing things that wastes our time and life, our energy, effort or money.

Living 8020 tells us we need to get rid of the junk we don't need, at least 80% of it because we'll never use it, for example. 

These are just a few of the millions of possible examples of how to apply the 80-20 rule, and the trick is to find creative ways to apply it yourself in your life. It really works and is extremely useful, so I hope you will adopt it as a tool for your life's toolbox because 80-20 Rules!

The Possibilities for Using the 80-20 Rule Are Endless

Using the 80-20 rule and seeing its possibilities for use, which only increase over time, will be very exciting. I love to follow it, and know you'll catch the "Living 80-20" fever. If you do, it can and will become an important “rule of life” and “rule of business” for you, so you can focus on what you should and avoid the stuff that is insignificant.

I hope that you will begin to use this rule to help prioritize your life, both personally and professionally, to be more effective.

Other rules of life will be discussed in future articles, but "Living 8020" is so central to happier, more focused and simpler living method, it is one of the first concepts to understand.

There are endless possibilities for how to apply the 80-20 rule, and you must seek to discover those for yourself, now that you have the basic knowledge for how to do that.

The trick is to find creative ways to apply it yourself in your life, both personally and professionally. It really works and is extremely useful, so I hope you will adopt it as a tool for your life's toolbox because 80-20 Rules! 

Let's look next at another valuable concept that ties into this, in my article Understanding the Principles of Cause and Effect In Life.

What is the 80-20 Rule and Why is it so Useful? #8020

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:

• 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.

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:

• 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

What You Must Know about General Rules and the 80-20 Rule #8020

What's Important About "General Rules"

 A pineapple might be good to eat for most people, as a general rule, but maybe there are those who are allergic, to whom that rule would not apply.

General rules are very useful tools for our thinking, as a general rule, ha ha. That is the general rule about general rules.  By me saying "as a general rule", realize then, I am also implying that this rule does not always apply to every situation. 

So now we see the important nature of a "general" rule.  It applies, "generally speaking", or "in most cases" and perhaps as much as 80-90% of the time, but sometimes it does not apply all of the time (perhaps 10-20% of the time it may not). 

What's important is that we do not think that it will always apply, in an all-or-nothing way.  General rules do not follow an all-or-nothing way of thinking, as most things do not seem to nor should they.

General Rules and the 80-20 Rule

I dare say a general rule is closely related to an 80-20 rule, or way of thinking, that I explain in an article entitled "What is the 80-20 Rule and Why is it so Useful?" 

Again, what's important is to understand that when a general rule is declared, it is applicable in most cases, but also that it is not always so, it is not absolute.

A general rule therefore has the important characteristic that there could always be one or some (but few) exceptions. If the exceptions grow too large, then maybe the rule should not be a "general rule" or need to be re-looked.

What's Great About Declaring a General Rule?

A general rule is a useful guideline for our thinking in most situations and encounters. So it is a good way to keep ourselves congruent and consistent in our thinking and response to our environment. We should therefore know what rules fall into the category of general rules.

Rule application requires good judgment and perhaps some trust, when we determine a general rule might apply or not apply to specific situations, for specific reasons.  Yet the fact is, most rules are, or should be, general rules - while very few should be specific rules to be followed all of the time. Again, that's the general rule about general rules.

For instance, if we say that someone should not open an attachment or click on a link, we would not be wise to say this should not be done in every case. Otherwise, we might miss a legitimate attachment or link that we need for our job. So we require some judgment here.

Maybe if we don't know the sender, or were not expecting the email, the rule should probably apply. But when we are expecting a specific attachment or link at a specific time, and from a specific individual, then the general rule is, it should be ok to click.

General Rules Have Exceptions

Now, because that also is a "general rule" this means there may be an exception to this trust as a "possibility" worth entertaining in some cases. For example, if someone is a VIP in a company, maybe they should have as a rule to first have another level of verification before they click.

VIPs may require an alteration of the general rule, in their case, because they are higher risk more than the average user, and there is the potential the sender could have "spoofed" the email, or sent a fake email with a fake attachment, due to their high value. An attacker may take their time to do this, in their case, in a highly-specific way.

The point here is, and the "general rule" is (about rules) that there are almost always an exception to most rules, for one reason or another. It could involve a change of risk, politics, money, or whatever else.  Our thinking must be flexible enough to accept this and handle this.

Conditions and situations often differ in each case, and should be perceived individually, case-by-case rather that "all-or-nothing" in order to ensure the proper level of flexibility in one's thinking, in order to survive and prosper in our dynamic world.

This All Deals With Maintaining Flexibility In Our Thinking

To not remain flexible in our thinking, in this dynamic world, is like putting ourselves in our own box that we then can’t climb out of, resulting in a self-imposed limitations and self-imposed denial-of-service or denial-or-flexibility that we would otherwise need, to survive and prosper.

Maintaining flexibility in our thinking is one of the most important attributes necessary for dealing effectively with our world. Without this flexibility, we will struggle to survive and prosper.

With flexibility, we are able to bend, flex and adapt in amazing ways to not just survive, but in many cases, prosper and get ahead.   Without flexibility, we are easily broken.  I talk about this more in my article Why Flexibility Resilience and Agility in Life are So Important. 

Next, I will introduce the 80-20 rule in more depth in my article "What is the 80-20 Rule and Why is it so Useful?”   #GTD  #MindTools