Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? It’s a fascinating and well-established principle which states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
But how does this affect your business? Well, the 80/20 rule says that:
and so on.
While the 80/20 rule doesn’t apply to everything, it’s amazing how often it does apply, when you really think about things. Things like your time, for example.
When was the last time you looked hard at how you spend your day and asked yourself: “Am I spending 80% of my time doing the 20% of things that will make the biggest difference - and if not, how can I get there?”
It’s much smarter to identify these things and to focus on them than it is to try and hammer away at everything (which, incidentally is what most people do and most people, as you know, are not super-successful.)
Try and do everything and, no matter how hard you work, you’ll never yield the same rewards or achieve super-success.
Take a look at what you’ve spent your time on over the past few days. If that’s too hard, then keep a log of what you do, every 10 minutes, today. It can be truly enlightening.
Once you recognize that 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your inputs it’s liberating. And the impact of identifying the key 20% of activities that can really drive your business forward and then forcing yourself to focus on them has a game-changing impact on your results.
I’m not saying it’s easy – nothing worthwhile ever is – but it doesn’t half make a difference to every aspect of your life.
Go on, have a think. A proper think.
Identify your 20% and then ruthlessly allocate B-I-G chunks of time to those activities. It’s what super-successful business owners do.
And it’s what you and I should be doing as well.
