What Is The 80/20 rule? The Pareto Principle

Have you ever heard of the 80/20 rule or the 80/20 principle, Also known as The Pareto Principle? Well, you’ll learn about it in this post.

The origin of the 80/20 Rule

Originally, The Pareto Principle first started in 1906 as an observation back in Italy by a man named Vilfredo Pareto.

He noticed that 80% of the wealth belongs only to 20% of the population. Also, in a different case, he noticed that 20% of the pea pods in his garden produced about 80% of the peas.

Again, just to clarify, The Pareto Principal first started as an observation and it’s not a law of nature that most things in life are not distributed evenly.

Now, you might be wondering what does this observation really have to do with me! What does this really have to do with achieving more by working less?

Well, in this post, you’ll learn what the 80/20 rule is, and how vital this principle can really be for you when applied correctly into your life, which has shown to drastically improve productivity in a lot of people’s lives

So, let’s talk about it.

The Pareto Principle helps you realize that the majority of the results come from a minority of inputs.

In short, 20% of the input creates 80% of the results. Or vice versa 80% of the input creates 20% of the results.

In today’s current day and age, Vilfredo is still not that far off. 20% of the world’s population controls about 82.7% of the wealth.

Example to see how the 80/20 rule can affect people’s lives

There are 2 guys. One is Fred and the other is Jerry.

Fred is a hardworking man. He’s the guy that you always see working multiple jobs. He’s on the run trying to get things done; Trying to pay the bills, and trying to fix everything.

Then, there’s Jerry. This man is kind of the opposite of Fred. He works about 6 hours per day and for the rest of the day, he does whatever he wants when he wants and seems to always have the ability to enjoy hanging out with his friends and family.

Now, let me ask you: Who do you think is more productive?

If you were thinking Fred then in this case Fred is actually the busiest guy but not the most productive.

You see, being busy doesn’t mean productive and that’s where the 80/20 rule comes into place.

I said that Jerry has the ability to work 3 hours a day and he gets to do whatever he wants after. Fred, on the other hand, is a hardworking man but with the observation of the 80/20 rule; 80% of his effort is actually yielding 20% of the results.

Jerry, on the other hand, learned how to use his time more efficiently in a task where 20% of his efforts produce 80% of the results.

Now, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not saying hard work is a bad thing. You can work hard and inefficiently. So it’s always important to keep that in mind to make sure your work is productive.

The 80/20 rule is what I use when analyzing business tasks, buying groceries, learning skills, and allocating free time.

A couple of life examples:

20% of my tasks were bringing me about 80% of the results in a specific business goal which led to making those tasks a priority. For example. In my Blog “Get It Done”, about 20% of my posts are bringing in 80% of the traffic.

This isn’t a surprise honestly, because it’s very common among other Bloggers. I’m able to see what works and which posts don’t work and I’m able to focus on topics that work very well.

Another example

In the past, 80% of the time spent on the phone was pretty useless honestly. That’s why I deleted useless apps from it and now my work has improved a lot.

How can this apply to you?

Well, I read Tools Of Titans by Tim Ferriss and learned that it’s very helpful to organize our activities and think about strengths and weaknesses.

In other words, which things should you be doing on your own and which things should you delegate or even remove from your schedule.

When you find something that is yielding more results place your focus there and your time will be even used more efficiently; thus you’re able to become more productive.

Time is the most valuable currency. It’s irreplaceable. It’s something you can’t get back.

By applying the 80/20 principle, your ability to better control your time or what yields the most results will help you improve a lot.

Thanks for your time

This was my approach to develop good habits and break bad ones. I hope you liked it and if you did then I recommend you to join my newsletter I post about money management, how to make money online, and how to improve your productivity and mindset.

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