THE PRINCIPLE

20 per cent of what you do gives you 80 per cent of the value

The Pareto Principle is also known as the 80/20 rule or the Law of the Vital Few. It was derived from the observation by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto that 80 per cent of the land in Italy was owned by only 20 per cent of the population. It has since been extended to many other situations and seems to be reflected in our mundane experience – for instance, the likelihood that you wear 20 per cent of your clothing 80 per cent of the time.

The application that concerns us here is the notion that 20 per cent of what you do gives you 80 per cent of the value. This is borne out by the observation by time management experts that most people spend no more than 90 minutes of their 8-hour days actually working.

The obvious conclusion is that if you can figure out what that most valuable 20 per cent is, and do more of it, you will get lots more value. In order to have time to devote to that 20 per cent, of course you have to eliminate some of the not-so-valuable 80 per cent. You can try this now: list the five things you do that bring in the most money. (Naturally, money is not the only indicator of value, but it’s the one we will focus on for the moment.)

Now list five things you do at work that take up your time but don’t actually yield much value. Some of these may be essential even if they don’t provide direct value. For instance, filing doesn’t pay off directly but if you never do it, that will eventually affect your ability to do efficiently the things that do pay off. The idea is not necessarily to get rid of these tasks (unless you can) but to delegate them so you have more time to spend on the things that do greatly add to your income.

Which of the five things that don’t add so much value could you delegate? To whom? (If you’re not sure, this part’s discussion of outsourcing may help you.) If you didn’t have to spend time on those, which of the top value-producing tasks could you spend more time on? What do you think the outcome of that would be?

You can apply this to a specific project, too. What’s the most crucial 20 per cent that you need to get done? What can or should you delegate? For example, in the discussion in the section on action maps, one of the tasks I included was reformatting an ebook and I listed the possibility of having a graphic designer do this instead of me. Most likely a designer would do it faster and better than I could, and that would free up my time to spend on activities that are in my top 20 per cent.

If you’re intrigued by the Pareto Principle, you can test it out by applying it even for just one day. Figure out what are the highest-value tasks you can tackle that day and devote yourself to those only. That’s different from a Massive Action Day because you can work on several projects during the course of the day, but in each case only on the aspects that create the most value. At the end of the day, assess your results. I predict that you’ll become a fan of the 80/20 rule.

Website bonus

At www.CreativityNowOnline.com, click on the ‘Creativity Now!’ button. Bonus 14 shows you how to supercharge your productivity by applying the 80/20 rule to your to-do list.