31 Mar Living the 80/20 Life: 5 Ways to Achieve More with Less
We’ve all surely heard of the 80/20 Principle, or Pareto’s Law as it’s more formally known. It goes something like this:
80% of the results come from 20% of the effort.
It’s often thrown around in business as nothing more than a buzzword. Few actually do a full 80/20 analysis of their business and almost no one I’ve come across has applied the same to their life as a whole. Other than two people that is: Richard Kock and Tim Ferriss–and the people who have since followed in their footsteps (me included). The 80/20 Principle is the source material for what Tim wrote in The 4-Hour Work Week. It took me reading it a couple times to grasp the simplicity and life-altering implications of the principle. The time saved and gained will blow your mind.
The amazing thing is that the studies in this book show the principle working in just about every possible scenario. Of course it’s not always 80/20. Sometimes 90/10 or 95/5 or even 70/30. But the point is it works–without fail.
Richard’s purpose was to explain this ancient principle in a way that would inspire action and application to every part of life. When applied to work, productivity will go through the roof, but when applied to your life outside of work, happiness and fulfillment do just the same. All it takes is a shift in thinking. Try the following for a few weeks and the time in your life will never be the same.
5 ways to apply the 80/20 Principle to enhance your life:
1. Do the 20% of your work that leads to 80% of your results: Track all the time you spend on projects each hour of each day for a week. How many of these things were necessary? How many got you closer to your goals? How many were a waste of time? How many could someone else have done? Pick the 20% of your tasks that yield 80% of the results and outsource or simply discontinue the rest. Wondering what to do with your remaining time? Enjoy life. I outsourced a significant portion of my work to two very reliable virtual assistants in India starting in 2006. Ravi and Vikash now do that 70 or 80% for me. At $3-5/hour it is very hard to beat. Check out eLance.com if you’re looking to out source. Search “Virtual Assistant”. Once you start outsourcing, you’ll never go back.
2. Locate the 20% of your customers who drive 80% of your profits: Find your top 20% customers (by profit, not revenue) and fire the rest. Yes, fire them. The goal is not to work your life away. It is to make a good living to enjoy your life. If you must work more, then list out the characteristics of your 20% customers and go out and find more of them. You will not believe how liberating it can be to fire a customer who’s been a real pain in the ass.
3. Prioritize the 20% of your friends who provide 80% of your support and enjoyment: If you apply 80/20 to your relationships you will surely find that a few people in your life provide the majority of your support, excitement, laughter and feelings of connection. On the other side, there is likely another 20% group of people who account for most your sleepless nights, tears, anger and frustration. If you don’t want to feel this way, stop spending time around your bottom 20. Fire them and work on duplicating your top 20. This may sound a little callous, but it’s not. It’s practical. The quality of our life comes down to the quality of the people and experiences that fill it.
4. Fill your life with the 20% of your experiences that provide 80% of your happiness: As humans, our two biggest priorities are to move towards pleasure and away from pain. As mentioned above, find the few people, things, places and experiences that provide 80% of your happiness, fulfillment, pleasure and excitement. Also find the things that cause you to feel the majority of your negative emotions. Focus your time on the top 20% and avoid the bottom 20% like the plague.
5. Do the 20% of your workouts that lead to 80% of your physical gains: The majority of fitness results come from a small portion of most workouts. 80% of the muscle is built in the last 20% of the reps. Crossfit is a great example. The workouts are 7-14 minutes long on average but they provide more physical benefit than most hour-long workouts. Spending more time on something is not always a good thing. If you believe your workouts must take an hour then you’ll likely miss a lot more of them. What if they only took 7 minutes, but that seven minutes really tested your limits? You’re likely to show up a lot more often.
I know this sounds simple. But few people stop to actually do it. It is truly possible to spend the majority of your time doing the things that you love. The only way to get there is taking Pareto’s 80/20 principle seriously. It will make all the difference.
Do not let more than 3 months go by without performing a full 80/20 breakdown of all areas of your life (especially your personal life). It will only take a couple hours and those hours will likely save days before you know it… 80/20 in action yet again.
Somewhere along the path of life, most of us were taught to associate fulfillment and worth with the number of hours spent–thinking the more the better. This has lead many of us to working aimlessly just to say we filled the day. This IS NOT the goal. The goal is be fulfilled, happy, efficient, effective and more than anything else, to enjoy life. Happiness is a daily right. It is not something we need to work our ass off for years to finally achieve. That is what Pareto stumbled on all these years ago. I encourage you to do the same.
What is the most creative way you’ve applied the 80/20 Principle? What surprised you? What experience can you pass along to the rest of us? Please share in the comments section below.
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Alejandro "The Fittest Vegan"
Posted at 18:15h, 07 DecemberI feel motivated man, I just wanted to let you know that I read your post today and I went and picked the 80/20 book this afternoon. so thanks, I’m happy to look for that 20%
Scott
Posted at 19:28h, 13 DecemberThat book will rock your world Alejandro. Seriously! So glad you picked it up. Let me know what you learn, and more importantly what you do with it…
Welcome,
Scott
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Gerard
Posted at 10:14h, 13 MayI have the read the book. It is a good book. And Scott, you did a very good job summarizing its contents.
However, the book is lacking one key ingredient. Despite all the talk about doing the 20% that matters most, it seems to never show you how to identify that 20%.
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Posted at 17:27h, 30 NovemberHis last name… is Koch.. I enjoyed reading though!
Chad
Posted at 05:27h, 16 DecemberTime management is something I’ve absolutely been struggling with– there never seems to be enough time in the day to do all the many, many things I want to do. I’m working on utilizing this principle to focus on what’s most important, fully immersing myself in each activity I do during the day, and making sure to enjoy the process as I go… and I think this will help me get the most I can out of learning and life. Great post man, thanks for helping to clarify this incredible principle.
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Matt B
Posted at 04:05h, 17 DecemberInteresting application applying 80/20 to friends. I had not thought of that one! does seem a bit mean though. Good luck and thanks for the post. Enjoyed it.
Kaleb
Posted at 18:14h, 23 DecemberI plan to use the 80/20 daily now. Its really (guess you can say), what i needed to hear. Thanks. Im going get the book ASAP.
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Kyle B
Posted at 15:01h, 21 FebruaryScott, thanks for the advice on performing a full 80/20 breakdown of all the areas of my life. I’ve seen the 80/20 principle work wonders in my business life and I’m stoked to see my future progress when applying the same principle with my health, personal relationships, etc.!
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LauraG
Posted at 12:54h, 08 Decemberi use to the 80/20 in my creative life by getting up two hours early to write. By putting my dream first my whole day goes better: I feel relaxed, on target and on purpose. I also now use it with people and have eliminated time spent on bummer people who waste my time. I worry less and laugh more.
Benson Wallace
Posted at 22:50h, 07 MarchHey Scott/All,
Just wondering if anyone out there has any tips for applying the 80-20 rule to a teaching job.
I personally think it’s pretty hard to outsource preparation and marking, especially if you work in a small private school and are expected to know your students’ strengths and weaknesses intimately, as I do/am. And most paperwork is very school-specific, which makes delegation/outsourcing difficult. What’s more, most high schools require you to be on campus from, say, 8am to 3:30pm, 5 days a week, even though you might not be teaching that whole time. It’s very hard to find a school that will be flexible on this, no matter how much of a rock star teacher you might be.
If any other teachers out there have achieved any paradigm shifts, I’d love to hear from you!
Thanks,
Benson
Joseph Williams
Posted at 22:20h, 19 AugustHi Benson thanks for the question. Could you outsource the research part of your job? Meaning hiring a college student to search for cool common core activities that you can try in your class?
How about applying the principle during the summer months to start an educational consulting company?
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Posted at 01:27h, 26 AprilI just applied the 80-20 principle to reading this articles comments and skipped the ones that don’t have replies. I feel like this is “cheating” because anyone else doing the same would equally skip this comment. Eh, I’m sure I’ll find the right people a more effective way later.
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mrpush
Posted at 10:22h, 12 JanuaryHi, after reading this article I realize that it is just pushing more narcissism, something the world does not need. It implies that life is all about money and stuff as in “The goal is not to work your life away. It is to make a good living to enjoy your life.” The direct implication is that “if you make a good living, THEN you will enjoy life”. So what is the authors idea of “enjoying life”? Meeting with friends and getting drunk? Driving a fancy car that others desire? I’m not really sure.
Use the 80/20 in my relationships? Wow. So my mother is causing me stress and anxiety and frustration due to her health issues and you want me to spend the least amount of time with her as possible so that I will feel better with less stress? The author is telling me to “fire” my ill mother?
What you propose here is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what gives people real fulfillment, true joy, and true happiness. True joy and happiness are only found when they are achieved REGARDLESS OF OUR CIRCUMSTANCES! These things are a conscious decision we make daily, hourly, and by the minute. Lack of true joy and happiness comes only from NOT being CONTENT with what you currently have RIGHT NOW TODAY not what you are going to strive for or possibly achieve tomorrow.
When we give ourselves away to others instead of focusing on our own wants, needs, or desires will you find REAL FULFILLMENT.
Those who pursue their own desires over others will never be fulfilled. They will continue in the RAT RACE of society, believing that when they achieve something else they will finally be happy and fulfilled. Good luck with that, your day will never come.
With the state of this world one can only be truly happy, joyful, and fulfilled by pursuing our Creator and becoming as self-less as possible giving ourselves away to others.
That does not ever imply we are not to work or pursue to achieve anything, it simply means we must follow the rule God-Others-Self to be obtain REAL joy and peace and happiness.
We spend all our life-times pursuing all our wants and desires achieving some of them and never being truly happy or fulfilled and then suddenly what we find is all our time was spent on these mundane tasks, with no real time with loved ones and on things that really mattered and when we are at deaths door we have no idea what is going to happen.
REAL JOY is had NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES! So if I have terminal cancer, I can still have Joy every day even in pain. How so? Well if you truly know what will happen to you when you die, and you know that you will not see eternity separated from your Creator, then ALL THINGS even those things that are considered TERRIBLE here on earth (sickness, pain, suffering) are all NOTHING compared to eternity. It is simply having the correct perspective of your life.
Only if you KNOW FOR SURE that the worst thing that can happen to you CAN’T HAPPEN TO YOU, can you have Peace and Joy no matter your circumstances!
THIS is what everyone is after and it can only be found in seeking our Creator and understanding what is before us now and into eternity.
PLEASE do not be one who follows this advice and just conform to the ways of our worldly system of “Me and More”, SEEK our Creator with all your heart and you will KNOW FOR SURE and then you can truly have peace and joy everyday no matter what circumstances you find yourself.
Can the 80/20 rule help people focus on tasks to help get things done, sure. But you need to spend MORE TIME with the 20% at the bottom of your list that NEED YOUR HELP AND LOVE AND SUPPORT, not RUN AWAY FROM THEM in an attempt to make yourself less stressed! Help them without grudge and put them first and you will feel REAL fulfillment that words can’t describe and you will have no need to be acknowledged and patted on the back for your good deeds.
When someone does pat you on the back you will know that you are truly doing well and are well on your way to daily Joy when being acknowledged makes you feel UNCOMFORTABLE instead of PROUD.
Look at the cap words here: “As humans, our two biggest priorities are to move towards PLEASURE and
away from pain. As mentioned above, find the few people, things, places
and experiences that provide 80% of your happiness, fulfillment, PLEASURE and EXCITEMENT. Also find the things that cause you to feel
the majority of your negative emotions. Focus your time on the top 20%
and avoid the bottom 20% like the plague.”
This is basically saying “be a narcissist”.
Don’t do it folks, it will only give you temporary brief fulfillment like eating your favorite snack. It will NEVER bring you REAL LASTING peace, joy or happiness and is a LIE!
Have a great day!
Stefan Thyron
Posted at 11:14h, 31 JanuaryAfter reading the 4 Hour Work Week I’ve been really fascinated with the 80/20 principle. It makes a lot of sense for doers and results oriented people. This principle allows us to get more done is less time and spend more time doing the things we love. I enjoyed reading about some different ways to apply this principle to my life. I had never considered applying the principle to workouts before until now!