There is a “law” and it comes from an economist named Vilfredo Pareto who lived from 1848 to 1923.
Pareto established that 80% of the wealth and income of the world was produced and possessed by 20% of the population. His further investigation into this datum found that the 80/20 law applied to many other aspects of life.
20% of our activities create 80% of the good and desired outcomes in our life.
20% of the people we associate with cause 80% of our problems and unhappiness.
20% of a business’s marketing generates 80% of it’s sales.
The list of examples goes on and on and the ratio can be even more skewed: 90/10, 95/5 and 99/1 are not uncommon.
So here’s the bottom line: If 20% of your time and effort gives you 80% of your results (value and products), what does the rest of your time (the majority of your time) give you?
That’s right… not much!
You’re wasting more time than you can possibly imagine on activities that will give you little to nothing of value. Checking your email 35 times a day or spending 2 hours surfing the web or on Facebook, will lead to very few products and will probably not give you one iota of goals attainment.
What are you trying to accomplish in life or in your business? What 20% of your activities contribute to those goals?
What if your cell phone, computer, ipad, ipod, TV and video games all went up in smoke? What would you do with your time? You’d have to get creative that’s for sure. What if you used some of that time to re-enforce the 20% of your efforts that are producing positive results?
Take the challenge: Eliminate some of these unproductive activities for couple days, reevaluate your 80/20 and see if you don’t agree with this concept.
