80-20 Rule

The 80/20 Rule – Your Formula For Personal Success

You are probably familiar with the 80/20 rule, or the Pareto Principal, although you may not have heard it exactly referred to as such. By definition the Pareto Principal is the concept that for any given event, 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause. It was named for an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who in the early 1900s observed that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by only 20% of its people. Since then the 80/20 rule has been applied to everything from profitability in business, as in “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients” — to the “bean counting” actuarial practices of major corporations; such as when Microsoft believed it could solve 80% of the problems with Windows, by fixing only 20% of the bugs. It can also be applied to your personal success and happiness.

In our careers, if we accept that 80% of productivity comes form 20% of the people, it would seem that those who are driven to succeed are the “twenty-percenters.” Twenty-percenters are self motivated, and dedicated to personal growth. The 80% are those who are content in doing only their job description, happy to ride the coattails of the 20%. As an interesting aside this has lead to a management style known as Superstar Management, where a company will focus its efforts in supporting the 20% – or the “superstars” who are doing most of the work. But this is really a flawed application of the principal. Those companies would be far better off spending 20% of their time improving the performance of the slackers!

In our personal lives the exact proportion 80/20 is less important than an understanding that the principal is valid. This means that for any given aspect of our personal life, a large part of any result is driven by a small amount of effort. Take happiness for example. Applying the Pareto Principal, this means that 80% of our happiness is created by 20% of “something.” So instead of running around trying so many different things to make us happy – find those few things that you know to truly make you happy, and concentrate on those – and stop wasting time and efforts on the rest.

The same applies to relationships. Instead of trying everything you can to please your spouse or partner –understand that there are only a few little things that really make that person happy, or attracted to you – and concentrate on doing just those, and you will have a much more successful relationship.

The real lesson of the 80/20 rule as a way of life is, in any given situation focus 80% of your time and energy on the 20% of things that really matter – and you may just wind up being 100% better off!