Written by: Michael Gidlewski, Achievement Unlimited Inc.
A principle that operates in every area of our life and business and one that can help you become more effective is the 80/20 Pareto Principle. The 80/20 Rule is one of the most important and helpful concepts of all time. It is also called the Pareto Principle after its founder, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who first discovered it in the early 1800’s.
What it means is that approximately 20% of the ACTIVITIES you spend your time, effort, energy and resources on will produce 80% of your RESULTS. We call those top 20% of activities your High Payoff Activities or Wealth Creating Activities. Twenty percent of your efforts will produce eighty percent of your results.
On the other hand, 80% of the activities that you spend your time, effort, energy and resources on are producing only 20% of the results! We call them Low Payoff Activities. These low payoff activities will make little if any impact on your goals and your results. This means that only a small portion of your activities are vital and those contribute the most towards you goals and accomplishments. This implies there may be just a handful of activities, perhaps only 2, 3 or 4 activities that are producing 80% of the results you currently experience! Focus on the 20% activities that drive your results. Focus on those 20% of activities that make the greatest impact to unlock higher productivity, greater profits and rewards in your business and personal life. You should spend 80 percent of your time doing the things that you do best. Typically, this means that if you have a list of 10 items to do, two of those items will turn out to be worth as much or more than the other eight items put together.
The bottom line is we all have the same 24 hours in a day to accomplish our goals. As business owners you must constantly ask: what is the highest and best use of my time right now. Am I working on the highest payoff activity I can?
Critical to your success is learning to say no to any activities, to anything that is not really a good use of your time. Constantly ask what really matters most in my organization. Time is going to pass anyway so you may as well make the best use of it.
We all have the same 168 hours in the week to work with. What happens is we get enslaved in the 80% of the activities that are only producing 20% of the results. We spend 80 percent of our time doing unproductive and meaningless things, and by the end of the day we feel exhausted, frustrated, and angry.
Wasted time! Wasted effort! Wasted energy! Wasted resources! Stop wasting your precious time right now and start applying the 80/20 rule to your business by spending your time, effort, energy and vital resources on those HPA’s that are going to return tremendous investment back to you.
It’s not the hours you put in that count; it’s what you put in the hours.