Understanding the 80/20 Rule and Why It’s Not Always Effective
The 80/20 rule is something you’ll encounter a lot when looking for ways to boost your productivity. It’s often held up as the pinnacle of productivity hacks but it’s also misunderstood and incorrectly used.
So, what is the 80/20 Principle, how does it work, and will it be beneficial for you?
What is the 80/20 Principle?
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The 80/20 Principle is also known as the Pareto Principle and was named after Vilfredo Pareto, a famous economist. It states that 80% of consequences stem from 20% of causes and has been applied to many walks of life.
Initially, the Pareto Principle was used to highlight the fact that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by just 20% of the population. Since then, it has been used in economics, business, and human resources, such as the idea that 80% of business profits are driven by 20% of staff or that 80% of your success lies in 20% of your output.
When used in reference to productivity, the idea behind the 80/20 Principle is that 80% of your achievements are potentially driven by just 20% of your tasks. Your goal, therefore, is to prioritize the tasks that are most important and will have the most impact.
What the 80/20 Principle Is Not
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There are a few misunderstandings regarding the 80/20 Principle.
Firstly, the fact that it equals 100% doesn’t mean anything. For example, take the saying,?“Success is 10% talent and 90% hard work”. It adds up to 100% and suggests that being successful is about having a little talent and doing a lot of work. Success is the output and both hard work and talent are the inputs.
With the 80/20 Principle, the 100% is coincidental. 20% of your consumers might drive 80% of your sales, but there are still another 80% of consumers and another 20% of sales that need to be considered. It’s a combination of inputs and outputs, so the fact that it equates to 100% is irrelevant.
It’s also not exact. It doesn’t mean that exactly 80% of your sales are controlled by 20% of your customers, but rather it indicates that a small input is responsible for a large output.
How to Use the 80/20 Principle for Productivity
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Where productivity is concerned, the 80/20 Principle is usually structured in the following way:
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As an example, let’s say that you’re a freelancer and your day is broken into the following blocks:
That “major project” will likely account for the bulk of your output that day. It’s the most important thing that you will be doing and something that must be prioritized. That’s where you should focus your efforts, before spreading your time accordingly to the rest of those tasks.
The general idea is that you should be devoting 100% of your attention and focus to the 20%, and then leaving the less important tasks for times when you’re a little more tired and not as productive or ignoring them completely.
It’s common sense, and yet it’s something that many of us overlook. When we’re feeling good, creative, and energized, we often waste time on Facebook or playing video games. We don’t want a good mood to be ruined by work, even though it inevitably means that we’ll be working when we’re unhappy, tired, and frustrated, making us feel even worse as a result.
Not only should you emphasize the biggest and most important tasks, but you should break them up in a way that allows you to do the most important parts first.
For instance, that 2-hour job is to write an article, edit it, fact-check, find images, and then confirm some details with the client, I might jump straight into the writing, give that the bulk of my attention, and then start thinking about the minor details.
If you feel like these things don’t apply to you, write a list of the 10 things that you do every day and then go through the list making notes of the results they provide. Highlight the two that provide the best results and spend more time doing them.
Does the 80/20 Principle Actually Work?
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The 80/20 Principle does work, but only if it’s applied correctly and only in certain areas.
Take learning a language as an example. Over the course of your language learning, you will spend approximately 20% of your time attaining 80% proficiency, because the leap that takes you from “Intermediate” to “Fluent” is huge. But does that mean you can afford to ignore the final 20%? Of course not. It’s arguably more important, and so that’s when it makes sense to devote more time for less of a result.
The same is true for learning an instrument and for many other skills.
It’s also worth noting that the remaining 80% of apparently insignificant tasks are still important. If we return to the example of a freelancer, responding to emails and dealing with invoices may be less important than completing a major deadline, but without those responses, the freelancer wouldn’t get new work and without those invoices, they wouldn’t get paid.
In such cases, it’s less about eliminating these tasks from your day and more about reducing the time that you waste on them.
For more information on productivity, freelancing, and running an online business, visit?GrowthbySabir?and?This Week With Sabir.