4 Steps To Apply The 80-20-Principle To Your Life

This article is part of the series on How To Make The Next Year The Best Year.

Today the topic is productivity.

I’m sure you already know the 80-20-Principle, also known as Pareto Principle. In terms of time management it basically states that only 20% of your tasks are responsible for 80% of your results. Don’t insist on the exact ratio, but I am sure you get the idea.

To apply this principle basically means to figure out what tasks are those that influence your result the most, and then concentrate on those tasks, while eliminating or delegating the remaining blocks. But how to decide on what you should concentrate your efforts, and what can be dumped completely with little or no influence on your overall results?

There’s a process that you can put any given task or project through to look if it is one of your 80-20-tasks, or not.

1. Procrastinate like hell: Batch processing

Must your task be done today, or can you just as well do it tomorrow? How long can you allow things to pile up until they will blow up in some form?

This is extremely useful when handling recurring tasks. For example, is it possible that you process your mail just once a day (or week, or month, or… you get the idea!)

When you process 100 mails at once, you will certainly less time than when you interrupt yourself every time a new mail arrives.

2. Don’t procrastinate if you can forget about it completely

There are even some things that will never blow up if you forget about them completely. You will be surprised at how many tasks prove themselves completely unnecessary to your goals when you look at them closely.

If a task has little or no influence on your results in a particular area, but consumes a much higher amount of your time or effort, then it is better to dump it completely. And even if it is lain annoying and you can dump it for little cost, it might me worth it.

3. Triage

Triage means that you concentrate your efforts on those tasks where your work makes a difference.

• Will this get the desired results without you doing it? Forget about it!
• Will this blow up no matter what you do? Forget about it, too!
• Will it blow op if you forget about it, but if you do something, it will not? Go for it with all your might! But…

4. Limit your time

Set yourself an unreasonable small time-limit. If you usually work 4 hours on a task, try with 2 hours instead, or just 1 if you are brave. Find out what is the most important aspect of your task and do this first, then if you have time left, go for the second-most important, and so on, until the time is over. Look at the results. They will probably not be perfect, but somewhere close to perfect, since still only 20 % of your efforts on that task will be responsible for 80% of your results.

Play with the time limits to look how far you can go without danger.

If you have additional ideas on how to apply the 80-20-Rule, have a hard time with it, or want to share your own story to inspire others, please use the comment form below or send me a private message using my contact form.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you get new posts via RSS feed!