Get Results With the 80-20 Rule!
Do you ever feel that you’re working your butt off, but you aren’t getting anywhere? Most people feel this way at some point in their lives, in fact, chances are that you’ll feel this way forever until you figure out the 80-20 rule. If you want to learn the 80-20 rule from Wikipedia you can go here, but I think you guys might want to stick with the short and friendly version from Simon’s Money Notes :)).
What is the 80-20 rule? Some wise Italian dude by the name of Vilfredo Pareto figured out that 80% of your results comes from 20% of your effort. The rule is much broader than that, for example, you wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time, or you’ll get 80% of your business from 20% of your clients. Once you know and understand this, you can now go and figure out a way to cut 80% of your efforts and concentrate on whats bringing you results.
Most of the people I know (myself included sometimes), put a lot of focus and energy on things that are not getting them anywhere. What happens when you’re feeling a little tired or stressed, and you look at your to-do list in the morning? You’ll start by doing the little tasks because its the easiest. The secret is to prioritise your jobs, and only do the top priority ones. Ok, you all know that I love the point format, so here goes.
- Make a list of all your current projects and spend some time figuring out the ones that are actually getting you somewhere.
- Categorize your to-do list so that you have the most important jobs at the top. Label your top priority jobs with an A, your ‘if there’s time’ jobs with a B, and your ‘not necessary’ jobs with a C.
- When you start your day, only do the A jobs. This might take a bit of discipline but it’s worth it. If you have absolutely zero A jobs on the list then go on to B, and chances are that you won’t even make it to C.
And that’s it, you’ll see your results improve dramatically, I know because it works for me.
Simon
If you like this post consider subscribing to my full RSS feed.
this really didn’t clearly say how to use the 80-20 rule, it just said to do your priority items on your to do list and didn’t even explain what link there is between priority and 20% items.
Well Anon, I can’t tell you what to put on your priority list but I can assure you that 80% of your to-do list will be in the C category, if you can’t figure that out by making the list yourself, then I can’t help you.
I’m a business man, not a baby sitter.
Simon
I’ll try this out with my to-do lists. However, I normally do the stuff that I feel like doing first…regardless of importance!
great post simon! just stumbled it
since i know you can’t stumble your own posts lol.
Thanks Shaun, I appreciate the stumble :).
Simon
Very good post. I like list too, and formating them by A,B,C makes very good sense. Although we may want to do the list in a half hazzard order sticking to the plan will gain much beter results. Discipline is Key.
Amazing post! I think the same can go for your clients, too. I mean, you don’t want to leave any of your clients out in the cold (so to speak), but you definitely should spend more time and effort on your reliable and best clients. According to the Pareto principle, the top 20% of your clients should make up 80% of your income. If this is so, then shouldn’t you give those clients more attention?
I recently found a site devoted to the Pareto principle for sales—it provides tools and information on how to apply this principle to your everyday business. They also provide a CRM with a service matrix, which automatically calculates the dates that you should be contacting your clients. For example: if you want to call your AAA clients once every quarter, it will show up on your organizer as a task you need to do for the day, based on the client’s review date.
For more information, check out http://www.breakthroughbusinessdevelopment.com.