He later discovered that virtually
all economic activity was subject to this Pareto Principle as well.
For example, this rule says that
20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results. 20% of your
customers will account for 80% of your sales. 20% of your products or services
will account for 80% of your profits. 20% of your tasks will account for 80% of
the value of what you do, and so on.
This means that if you have a list
of ten 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 Greatest Payoff
Here is an interesting discovery.
Each of these tasks may take the same amount of time to accomplish. But one or
two of those tasks will contribute five or ten times the value as any of the
others.
Often, one item on a list of ten
things that you have to do can be worth more than all the other nine items put
together. This task is invariably the one that you should do first.
The Most Valuable Tasks
The most valuable tasks you can do
each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for
completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. For this reason, you must
adamantly refuse to work on tasks in the bottom 80% while you still have tasks
in the top 20% left to be done.
Before you begin work, always ask
yourself, “Is this task in the top 20% of my activities or in the bottom 80%?”
Getting Started
The hardest part of any important
task is
getting started on it in the first place. Once you actually begin work
on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally
motivated to continue. There is a
part of your mind that loves to be busy working on significant tasks that can
really
make a difference. Your job is to feed this part of your mind
continually.
Managing Your Life
Time management is really life
management, personal management. It is really taking control over the sequence
of events. Time management is
control over what you do next. And you are always
free to choose the task that you will do next. Your ability to choose between
the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of
your success in life
and work.
Effective, productive people
discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them.
They force themselves to eat that frog, whatever it is. As a result, they
accomplish vastly more than the average person and are
much happier as a result.
This should be your way of working as well.
Action Exercises
Make a list of all the
key
goals,
activities, projects and responsibilities in
your life today. Which of them are,
or could be, in the top 10% or 20% of tasks that represent, or could represent,
80% or 90% of your results?
Resolve today that you are going
to spend more and more of your time working in those few areas that can really
make a difference in
your life and carrier, and less and less time on lower value
activities.
