The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less

by Richard Koch

Innovate new 20 percent activities. Steal 20 percent ideas from elsewhere: other people, other products, other industries, other intellectual spheres, other countries. Apply them in your own 20 percent backyard.

PART THREE WORK LESS, EARN AND ENJOY MORE

9 BEING FREE

Our objective, as 80/20 thinkers, is to leave action behind, do some quiet thinking, mine a few small pieces of precious insight, and then act: selectively, on a few objectives and a narrow front, decisively and impressively, to produce terrific results with as little energy and as few resources as possible.

80/20 THINKING IS HEDONISTIC 80/20 Thinking seeks pleasure. It believes that life is meant to be enjoyed. It believes that most achievement is a by-product of interest, joy, and the desire for future happiness.

80/20 THINKING BELIEVES IN PROGRESS

We need to apply progress to the quality of our own lives, individually and collectively.

Nothing desirable need be unobtainable.

Only a few decisions really matter. Those that do, matter a great deal. Choice can always be exercised.

Do not look for causes, especially not for causes of failure. Imagine and then create the circumstances that will make you both happy and productive.

80/20 INSIGHTS FOR INDIVIDUALS

There are always winners and losers—and always more of the latter. You can be a winner by choosing the right competition, the right team and the right methods to win. You are more likely to win by rigging the odds in your favor (legitimately and fairly) than by striving to improve your performance. You are more likely to win again where you have won before. You are more likely to win when you are selective about the races you enter.

One of the most important decisions someone can make in life is their choice of allies.

80/20 thinkers choose a few allies carefully and build the alliances carefully to achieve their specific objectives.

10 TIME REVOLUTION

Does the most productive fifth of your time lead to four-fifths of valuable results? Are four-fifths of your happiest times concentrated into one-fifth of your life?

Our current use of time is not rational. There is therefore no point in seeking marginal improvements in how we spend our time.

There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 percent of our time.

The 80/20 Principle treats time as a friend, not an enemy. Time gone is not time lost. Time will always come round again.

The 80/20 Principle says that we should act less. Action drives out thought. It is because we have so much time that we squander it. The most productive time on a project is usually the last 20 percent, simply because the work has to be completed before a deadline. Productivity on most projects could be doubled simply by halving the amount of time for their completion. This is not evidence that time is in short supply.

Time keeps coming round, bringing with it the opportunity to learn, to deepen a few valued relationships, to produce a better product or outcome, and to add more value to life.

This can only be done by having consistent and continuous relationships, founded on optimism that the future will be better than the present, because we can take and extend the best 20 percent from the past and the present to create that better future.

Here are seven steps to detonating a time revolution.

Make the difficult mental leap of dissociating effort and reward

Decide on your own patron saints of productive laziness. Mine are Ronald Reagan and Warren Buffett.

Give up guilt

There is no value in doing things you don’t enjoy.

Do the things that you like doing. Make them your job. Make your job them. Nearly everyone who has become rich has had the added bonus of becoming rich doing things they enjoy.

I suspect that most people try too hard at the wrong things.

Free yourself from obligations imposed by others

The 80/20 Principle shows time and time again that the 20 percent who achieve the most either work for themselves or behave as if they do.

Be unconventional and eccentric in your use of time

Identify the 20 percent that gives you 80 percent

For happiness, identify your happiness islands: the small amounts of time, or the few years, that have contributed a quite disproportionate amount of your happiness.

Repeat the procedures for your unhappiness islands.

Repeat this whole procedure for achievement.

List separately your achievement desert islands. These are the periods of greatest sterility and lowest productivity.

Multiply the 20 percent of your time that gives you 80 percent

Eliminate or reduce the low-value activities

THE TOP 10 LOW-VALUE USES OF TIME

1 Things other people want you to do 2 Things that have always been done this way 3 Things you’re not unusually good at doing 4 Things you don’t enjoy doing 5 Things that are always interrupted 6 Things few other people are interested in 7 Things that have already taken twice as long as you originally expected 8 Things where your collaborators are unreliable or low quality 9 Things that have a predictable cycle 10 Answering the telephone

THE TOP 10 HIGHEST-VALUE USES OF TIME

1 Things that advance your overall purpose in life 2 Things you have always wanted to do 3 Things already in the 20/80 relationship of time to results 4 Innovative ways of doing things that promise to slash the time required and/or multiply the quality of results 5 Things other people tell you can’t be done 6 Things other people have done successfully in a different arena 7 Things that use your own creativity 8 Things that you can get other people to do for you with relatively little effort on your part 9 Anything with high-quality collaborators who have already transcended the 80/20 rule of time, who use time eccentrically and effectively 10 Things for which it is now or never

11 YOU CAN ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

START WITH LIFESTYLE Do you enjoy your life? Not part of it, but most of it: at least 80 percent of it?

WHAT ABOUT WORK?

You haven’t got it right until you are equally happy at work and outside work, and until you are happy at least 80 percent of the time at work and 80 percent of the time outside work.

Start from the premise that there does not have to be any conflict between your work life and the things you enjoy outside work. “Work” can be many things, especially as leisure industries now make up a large slice of the economy. You may be able to work in an area that is your hobby or even turn your hobby into a business.

WHAT ABOUT MONEY?

Once in your profession, if making money is really important to you and if you are any good at what you do, you should aim to become self-employed as soon as possible and, after that, to start to employ others.