by Gerald G. Mannikarote, MBBS MBA
The 80/20 Rule
Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? What do you know about it? How have you used it? Did you know that it came from an Italian economist in the 1800’s by the name of Vilfredo Pareto? He stated that for most events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. That’s why the 80/20 rule is called Pareto’s Principle.
Pareto’s Principle
So, with that being said, how can you use this principle? I have found it useful in almost everything that I do. I have taught this principle to almost everyone that I have coached as well.
Let’s take a look at our wardrobe for instance. It appears to be common knowledge that we use only 20% of the clothes that we own 80% of the time. This is a simple example of the 80/20 rule.
Now let’s look at productivity; specifically at time management. Where do you spend the majority your time? Where are majority of your delays? And where do you find the most productivity? A time utilization assessment may be necessary to better understand this. I have asked people that I have coached in the past to do a time audit to better understand their time utilization. Often times this comes out to some very strong revelations.
When doing a time audit, you may find that you are spending the majority of your time on things that are not the most productive. This may include things like necessary meetings, going through email, updating your social media, and web surfing. You may also find that in between all of these things you will be doing things that are more detrimental to your daily productivity. So what must you do to improve your productivity? How can you apply the 80/20 rule in productivity?
Parkinson’s Law
First of all we must understand that work expands with time. This is known as Parkinson’s Law. So what does this mean? Walt Disney has been quoted saying, “Everyone needs deadlines.” What this means is , based on your deadlines, your work will expand to fill it up. Or rather you will find tasks to fill up the available time until the deadline. So, in order to increase your productivity, you must shorten your personal deadlines for a given project or task. This will help reduce the amount of work you are expanding to fill up the time… which turns into procrastination. This is a nice segway into talking about the procrastination trap. Sometimes, people will schedule times for certain tasks knowing that they can finish it quickly and as a result, put it off for later and thereby expanding the work time.
Going back to shortening deadlines… when you shorten a deadline, try to stick to it. This will free up time for you to engage in other activities, whether it is for more productive work related/ project related programs or personal activities like time with family or exercise.
Increasing your productivity by 80%
You can apply this to sales as well. If you segment your customer base, you may be surprised to find that the majority of your business (roughly 80%) is through 20% of your customers. And similarly, 80% of your maintenance, issues, and problems may be coming from about 20% of your customers… and often times, both of these sets of customers are not the same. By segmenting your customers in this manner, you can effectively target who you need to work with. And who you may need to distance yourself from.
The Pareto’s Principle can be used in multiple ways. Please follow the blog for more productivity tips and tricks. What are some ways you can think of to increase your productivity by 80%? Leave your thoughts in the comments. You can also contact me at jerrydmann@dmanntraining.com
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