The Top 10 Lowest & Highest-Value Uses of Time according to 80/20 Principles

Notes From the Field - Steven Reynolds

"I never have enough time, energy or money....but I always have more than I need." Steven Reynolds - my life motto

Following up on my Paradox of the 80/20 Principle blog, I’m reminded that it’s our use of time, not time itself that is the enemy. There is no shortage of time. We are actually awash in it. In fact quantum physics and Einstein himself reminds us that time is relative and doesn’t fit neatly into a linear past, present and future as presented by graphical business representations. 

Instead, time keeps coming around and bringing with it unlimited opportunities for growth and development. By dramatically increasing our focused efforts on the vital 20% of productive activities we can fail faster, learn quicker and accomplish more. An 80/20 mindset treats time as an unlimited asset that never fades away and continually arrives 24/7/365, creating a perpetually pregnant NOW as highlighted by Physics Professor Richard Muller at the University of California, Berkeley. 

If we can learn to relax a bit, and get in better sync with a more collaborative posture towards time, we might just find ourselves moving into this compounding zone of creative problem solving as we free ourselves from the tyranny of the urgent and mindless obligations imposed by others. Here is a challenging list of our potential uses and misuses of time from Richard Koch.

The Top 10 Low-Value Uses of Time

 1.)    things other people want you to do

2.)    things that have always been done this way

3.)    things you’re not usually good at doing

4.)    things you don’t enjoy doing

5.)    things that are always interrupted

6.)    things few other people are interested in

7.)    things that have already taken twice as long as you originally expected

8.)    things where your collaborators are unreliable or low quality

9.)    things that have a predictable cycle

10.) always answering cell phone / email

 The Top 10 Highest-Value Uses of Time

 1.)    things that advance your overall purpose in life

2.)    things you have always wanted to do

3.)    things already in the 20/80 relationship of time to results

4.)    innovative ways of doing things that promise to slash the time required and/or 

     multiply the quality of results

5.)    things other people tell you can’t be done

6.)    things other people have done successfully in a different arena

7.)    things that utilize your own creative and imaginative capabilities

8.)    things that you can get other people to do for you that they already like to do and

     are good at

9.)    anything with high-quality collaborators who have already transcended the 80/20

      rule of time, who use time eccentrically and effectively

10.) things for which it is now or never

Lesson learned: We spend way too much unproductive time on low value activities that come with the territory of conventional business practices. Instead we need to focus on identifying those 20% activities that give us 80% of our productive value and then commit to doubling down on them daily. By gradually eliminating our unproductive activities we just might rediscover our unique talents and abilities and joyfully leave the herd mentality in the dust. 

Realizing that the quantity of our work is much less important that its quality, implementing the 80/20 principles will require some measure of self-guided freedom to choose a more unconventional and eccentric use of our time. I wonder what it will take for each of us to embrace the lofty goal of being equally happy at work and home at least 80% of the time.

“The things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” Goethe

Steven Reynolds is a Global Training Coordinator at LTC Language Solutions. He is also a Business ESL instructor, and focuses on the transformational power of language with expat corporate executives. You can find his blog – NOTES FROM THE FIELD and other works at LTC’s blog and LinkedIn