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"Learn to live the 80/20 way"

"Five concepts to challenge your view of the world"

Learn to live the 80/20 way

Can you work less and succeed more?

Richard Koch says that you can, and the secret is to do less. Every great religion and every bestselling self-improvement book or program promises a great reward from serious effort. The advice works for those who follow the prescriptions carefully, but the trouble is that most of us fall by the wayside.

The effort is too great. Have you ever had that experience? I certainly have. Wouldn’t it be great, therefore, if we could discover a way to do less, and yet get more of what we want --- more love, more happiness, more success?

Wouldn’t that be a program for everyone? It so happens that there is such a way. I stumbled across it by accident, and here it is. There is a scientific law, proven in business and economics, saying that the great majority of results come from a small minority of causes or effort.

You’ve probably heard of the law the pesky Pareto principle. It’s also called the 80/20 principle, because about 80 percent of results flow from 20 percent of causes. For example, we send 80 percent of our emails to 20 percent of the people in our address book, and we wear 20 percent of our clothes --- our favorite outfits more than 80 percent of the time. Police investigations reveal that 80 percent of accidents are down to 20 percent of drivers, and that 80 percent of crime is committed by 20 percent of criminals. In business, 80 percent of profits come from 20 percent of customers and 20 percent of products.

So what? Well, one day I had a sudden thought. Businesses have known for a long time that they can improve their position enormously by concentrating on the key 20 percent of activities. But why can’t people do the same? It turns out that we can. We can make our lives enormously better by doing less. The secret is not to do less of everything, but to do less of the great majority of things we do that don’t work very well for us. And to do more of the very few things that do deliver what we want.

The answer is focus. In every area of our life, we can work out the few things that are really important to us, and the few methods that give us what we want. We can divide everything around us, and everything we do, into two piles. top

There is the big pile, the 80 percent pile, that takes a lot of energy but delivers pitiful results, sometimes even making things worse. That is the mass of trivia that surrounds us and normally engulfs our life. We can call this big chuck of our lives the trivial many. Then, there is the small but vital 20 percent pile, which comprises the few things that work brilliantly. The vital few, that bring happiness to you.

Once we know what is in each pile the things we do, the thoughts we have, the people we meet, the techniques and methods we use we can do something terribly simple and wonderfully effective. That is to do much less of most things, the things in the big trivial pile. And more of the vital few things. Overall, we make much less effort, but we get much more reward.

The modern delusion is more with more. Nearly everyone thinks that to get more out of life, and succeed in what we want, we have to labor harder, devote more time to our work, and make sacrifices and trade-offs. I say No. In all aspects of life, we can find, to our astonishment and delight, that less is more. We can only life fully by subtraction. We make progress by stripping our activities and concerns back to a small authentic core. top

Success and relaxation, far from being enemies, are really twin cherries on a single stalk. Achievement and happiness flow from self-expression, from cutting out the parts of lives that we don’t like. If we have the courage to go against conventional wisdom, and live our lives differently, we can work less, worry less, succeed more, enjoy more, and make the people who matter in our lives hugely happier. Here are just a few examples of how the 80/20 Way works in different parts of our life:

Slow Down

We have all the time in the world. Really! Our enjoyment and achievement is heavily slanted to a small portion of our time. Once we realize this, we can calm down, take things more slowly, and yet get much more out of life. How? Try these for starters:

Work out the few things that you experience and do, that take little time, yet are of fantastic value. Think back to the last time you were really happy, then the times before that. What did these times, or some of them, have in common? Were you in a special place, with a particular person, or pursuing a similar sort of activity? Are there some common themes? I call these themes your happiness islands, because they’re set in a sea of times when you’re not particularly happy. Now, how can you multiply your time on happiness islands? top
If you figure that your happiness islands make up only a fifth of your time, how could you take that to a third or a half or even more? Luckily, there are always many activities that give us a poor return on happiness. Surveys of people watching television, for example, show that very few respondents say they are happy after watching two or more hours of TV. Typically, they become mildly depressed. If watching television makes you happy, do more of it. Otherwise, stop! What other things that have a poor happiness reward could you quit? What do you do out of a sense of duty? If there’s little pleasure in the duty, how much good are you doing? If you were happy, your happiness would overflow into the lives of those around you. Time spent being miserable is antisocial. top
Chuck you To Do List. Make a Not to Do List. Act less. Think more. Reflect on what really matters to you. Stop doing anything that isn’t valuable or doesn’t make you happy.
Be eccentric in your use of time. Slow down. Purge your diary. Allow an hour each day for exercise that you enjoy for instance, most people who don’t think they are athletic still enjoy a good walk in the country alone or with a friend. Dump your cell phone. As long as it won’t get you fired, stop going to meetings or events that bore you. Reclaim all your trivial uses of time so you have more time for yourself and the people you care about.
Watch out for the times that you find yourself brooding about the past or worrying about the future. Stop! Live in the present. Get more with less confine yourself to the present moment and think how you can enjoy and benefit from it. If there is no way to do so, do something else more rewarding!

Make a few Decisions

Life is easier and more fun after you make a few big decisions:

Who are you? What kind of person and you and do you want to be?
Who and what do you care most about?
Do you want to commit totally to one life partner? Who?
Do you want to raise children?
Do you want to make a name for yourself? For what?
Do you want to work for yourself or on your own terms? At what?
Do you want to create something that other people will notice and enjoy?
What’s your dream house and its address?
Where are you putting energy that’s not leading to happiness?

Focus on your best 20 percent

What are your strongest qualities, emotions, and abilities?
What parts of yourself are not a true reflection of who you are and who you wish to become? How can you dump these attributes?
can you make yourself more you? How do you accentuate what makes you different and valuable?

Make Money

There is no mystery about how to make money. It does not require a top paying job or luck in the lottery. The answer is simple and a bit boring: Save and invest ten percent of your income, before you receive it, by having it channelled automatically into a savings account. Do this now. It is the only reliable method and, thanks to the miracle of compound interest, it never fails. If you don’t do this, forget about making money. top

Master a few great Habits

We all have lots of habits. Most of them don’t make us more content or help us thrive. But there are a few habits that reliably do. Select five habits from the following short list and make them into things you do all the time. Your life can’t fail to benefit terrifically.

Habit Payoff

Daily exercise Much better health, feel great, look more attractive
Daily intellectual exercise Keep alert, raise intelligence, enjoy thinking
Doing one altruistic act a day Make you happy
Quiet thinking at start of day Clears mental clutter, you make better decisions
Daily nurturing of your lover Keep him or her; make them happy
Be generous to friends Deepen relationship, feel good
Deciding never to worry: Peace of mind, reduction of effort
Habitually asking yourself Startling progress in any situation
How to get More with Less

Enjoy Your Relationships

“There’s only one happiness in life,” wrote George Sand, “to love and be loved.” Carl Jung, the great psychologist, said, “We need other people to be truly ourselves.” We make sense of life through relationships. But in this area, above all, there is a trade-off between quality and quantity. Take your friends, for example. You probably have lots of friends. But apart from your family, whose death would leave you truly desolated? Count those people. They are your key friends, the 20 percent who contribute 80 percent of meaning and value to you.

Work out how much time you spend with your key friends versus all your other friends. Unless you’re spending most of your “friendship time” with the few key friends, you can derive enormous benefit from re-arranging your life so that you do so. Try to live near your best friends. In any case, see them often. But the most important relationship in your life is the person you choose to love and cherish. This is the single decision that will most affect your happiness throughout life. Yet most of us devote amazingly little thought and research to selecting our mate. We often give more thought to the house or the car we intend to buy.
If you are already in a relationship, decide whether to end it, or to commit 100 percent to it. Any middle route between these two extremes leads to unhappiness.
If you are totally committed to a relationship, focus on the few things that really matter to your lover. top

“We are all different and things that are not important to me are often very important to my wife, and the other way round. In our marriage, these are the few things that really matter to her. She wants me to be home on time. She wants to always be able to rely on me. She loves flowers. She loves me supporting her in her projects. She adores surprises. These are not necessarily the things I would most want to do for her. I could take her to candlelit dinner, I could buy her the car I’d like myself, take her on great vacations, I could do all sorts of other stuff, but nothing would impress her if I haven’t met the basic few needs that mean most to her.” Don’t do for others what you would like yourself. Do what your partner wants.

Let’s come back to where we started. The secret of a happy and fulfilled life is not difficult. Every piece of advice here is well proven to work. None is too difficult for us to follow. If life is difficult --- and it usually is it’s because we over-complicate it, and forget the essentials, most of which we know instinctively. Through striving too much, we make it impossible for us to do the few things that are guaranteed to make the people we care about happy, and therefore ourselves happy. Until we do less, we will never achieve what is worthwhile. top

“Success from less – Work less, achieve more: The secret of the 80/20 principle” In this speech Richard poses the proposition that might surprise many – how you can work less and achieve much more. As Richard says, “Most of you work too hard. And you do so for far too little result”. Richard sets a strong focus on how to apply your energies more effectively, looking for the payoffs that provide a multiplier of reward. A powerful quote – “Few things really matter. They matter a great deal’. ‘How to unlock nuggets of gold hidden in your business’ In this speech Geoff shows how companies can discover and unlock nuggets of gold buried in their businesses. He introduces ‘The Power of 16’, an 80/20 concept that suggest that the top 20% [of everything] are generally 16X more powerful that the other 80%.top

CEO Checklist: The Seven Secrets of the 80/20 Leader

It’s almost certainly true that 80% of your profits are made in chunks of your business that comprise less than 20% of your revenues. The ‘chunks’ may be particular products, customers, channels of distribution, geographies, stages of value added, or combinations of these. Do you know where your critical 20% lies?
Once you know your critical 20%, you can try to multiply this type of business. It’s worth it --- because adding another 20% of critical revenues could add another 80% of profits. Do you have a plan to double the critical 20%? Is it working?
Probably 50% of your customers, products, components, suppliers, and stages of value added add less than 5% to your revenues and profits. I call this the ‘weedy 50%’, because they are weeds that just get in the way. Do you know what your weedy 50% is? Are you acting to get rid of it?
Review all your growth initiatives and new projects. Almost certainly 20% or fewer of them will add 80% of the extra future value. Prune the bottom 50% of initiatives and give the resources to the top 20%. top
Who are the 20% of super-stars in your organization who will add 80% of the future human value? Do these few people get 80% of your time and attention spent leading, monitoring, mentoring, training and developing people?
What is the 20% or less of your time that adds 80% or more of your value? Could you double the time on this? What is the bottom 50% of your time in terms of value? Stop doing these things yourself delegate them, or just quit them altogether.
Organizations are successful when they are different from all competitors, provided that customers like what the corporation does when it’s different! Make a list of all the customer-pleasing things that are different about your company. What are the top 20% of these differences, the few really important differences that make a world of difference? How can you accentuate these differences, and multiply their impact? top

Five concepts to challenge your view of the world

Outlined Below are five concepts that are an extension of the 80/20 principle and 80/20 thinking.

Consider them carefully - the impacts can be quite profound.

The world is predictably unbalanced The concept that an unbalanced world is normal, and not the exception. Imagine the power this gives you compared to those who believe the world is 50/50 and do not understand that an unbalanced world is the norm.
The vital few hidden in the trivial many The concept that only a few things really matter - the vital few. But, they need to be identified from amongst the trivial many in which they are invariably hidden. Imagine the benefits of knowing that that there are only a few things that really matter, and the power of a strategy that enables you to focus on finding those few.
De-averaging The concept that the answer lies in understanding the forces that drive the detail. Averages hide a multiplicity of critical clues on what forces are really at play. Imagine the benefits of knowing the profitability profiles of your clients, and of knowing those that a serious money spinners an those that are serious loss makers - what would your strategy be?
Power of 16 The concept that a typical event in the top 20% is 16x more important / critical / significant than a typical event in the other 80%. Imagine the benefits of knowing how to exploit those few events that really have a huge payoff.
The 400% rule The concept that if the top 20% of events could be replicated 5x over, the result / output would be 400% of the original. Imagine daring to conceive of a world in which quantum gains are possible. To read more about these concepts we suggest purchasing the e-book "80/20 Thinking for Business"top

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