“The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
(Stephen R. Covey)

In 1906 Vilfredo Pareto (an Italian economist) observed that 80% of the property in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.

In 1941 Joseph M. Juran (a business consultant) came across Pareto’s work and expanded upon the principals to apply that 80:20 relationship to quality control. For example, 80% of the problems are caused by 20% of the causes.

You may also have come across that 80/20 relationship elsewhere. In other words a small proportion (20%) of something produces/creates a large proportion (80%) of results. It does crop up quite often when you are looking. For example, the book, “The 4-hour Work Week” by Tim Ferris recommends focussing your attention on the 20% of activities that bring in 80% of your income.

At times, there maybe occassions when I question the precise acuracy of the figures where I come across the 80/20 relationship being applied.

I still haven’t found the study that confirmed those precise amounts that says that we wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time. I agree that, on average, most people wear only a small proportion of their wardrobe – I’m just not convinced it falls as conveniently as such specific and round numbers 🙂

However, rather than getting hung up on the mathematics, I suggest you play with the concept of a small proportion of something producing/creating a large proportion of the results.

So how can you use the 80/20 rule in your life? Most people use it as a way to prioritise what you focus upon.

I know that when people are particularly busy, taking 5 minutes to play with something like this can seem impossible – there is so much to do, you couldn’t possible spare any time for anything else. In reality spending a few minutes to prioritise and pick the items that make the biggest difference can be the thing that puts pay to the headless chicken syndrome, where people run around busy and stressed but not achieving much.

Here’s some questions and ideas for you to play using the 80/20 rule:

Remember, these are your answers as they are relivent to you at this moment. You may find that your answers include actions, people, qualities, information etc. There is no right or wrong answers. It’s possible that some of the questions would be stronger for you if you made them more specific. By all means play with your wording, and see what answers you get.

· If you focused on the 20% of your strongest qualities, skills and abilities this week, what would be different? What would be the outcome if you choose to do this?

· What are the 20 % of things that if you did them would make that 80% difference?

Not sure? One way of finding that is by writing down all the things you have/want to do.
Add up everything you have on that list so that you know the number you have on there.
Using a calculator or just in your head divide the number of items by 5
(If your answer is not a whole number just use the closest whole number as your answer.)
Go through your original list of things you have/want to do and narrow it down to the things that will make the biggest difference if you spend time doing them. You are only allowed to select the number you got once you divided it by 5.

This is one of those techniques which is much easier to do in practice then it may first appear.
For example, If you wrote down 55 things you have/want to do, 55 divided by 5 is 11. So you can only select 11 items from that list that will make the biggest difference.

· What 20% creates 80% of your happiness?

· What, if any, 20% creates 80% of any unhappiness?

· What is the 20%, which for you, creates 80% more energy?

· The 80/20 rule, or Pareto’s principal as it’s also known, itself was taken from someone taking an observation and running with it in their own way. How can you use this in your life to make a difference?

Use the above and any other related questions that spring to mind as being useful for you to get extra clarity.

You then get to choose if you want to take any action to prioritise these in your life.
(You may even want to put a structure in place – be it some form of external reminder or building it into your daily routine)

Have a week full of things of your chosen priorities,

Love

Jen

This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com