What’s your 20 %

 

I am sure you have come across the 80/20 principle otherwise known as the Pareto principle in relation to the Italian economist who first coined this principle. Pareto made some interesting observations right from his garden to all of life in general. He came to the conclusion that in life and all endeavors, 80% of the results come from 20% of the activity. This is such a real concept that it has been adopted into the thinking of many corporations and lives of prominent people in the society. A critical look at your own life will show you the truth and efficacy of this statement.

Are you clear what 20% of your activities generate your biggest return? Which 20% of your relationships are of the greatest value? Which 20% of projects should you be expending most of your resources on? A failure to identify your vital few will hurt your ability to do meaningful work and generate meaningful results from your activity. Isolating and focusing on your top 20% will propel you faster towards your desired end.

Understand that you cannot be good at everything as a person or a corporation. Outsourcing exists so that corporations can focus on their core business to the exclusion of everything else. Partnerships exist so that individuals can bring their strengths together and mitigate against identified weaknesses. If you try to do everything all by yourself, you are bound to lose out on your ability to be exceptional at what you do.

Before you proceed with your activity today irrespective of whether you are a corporation or an individual, pause right now and answer the question of what your 20% is. You will be glad that you did it. I like what Stephen R. Covey says. ‘It is sad to climb to the top of the ladder only to realize it was leaning against the wrong wall.’ Those few minutes you take to clarify what your priorities are will go a long way in ensuring you have not wasted your time doing things which don’t matter or add any significant value at the end of the day.

Clarity on your 20% will help you focus on it better. It will give you fewer things to work on which will allow you to go deep and attain mastery. If you want to avoid shallow work, then you need to be clear on what is worth forsaking everything else for so that you can go deep. When you spread yourself too thin, you are likely to struggle to keep up with the demand of everything calling for your attention. Another reason to clarify your 20% is that you do not have infinite resources and you therefore must allocate the resources available to you on the most important of tasks and projects.  

What do you do with the rest of the tasks?

Is it that all the other stuff is useless or of no consequence? Not necessarily. It can still be divided into other categories. As a corporation for example, your core business could be manufacturing. While you focus on manufacturing, you need support functions like Human Resource Management, Accounting, legal representation just to name a few. All these functions are critical to the sustenance of the manufacturing concern but can be delegated to professionals while you focus on your core business.

Some tasks are delegated. Individuals delegate while corporations outsource. Don’t lose a dollar’s worth of time counting pennies. If there is somebody who can take care of something for you which in turn frees you to focus your attention on your most significant tasks, don’t think twice about bringing them on board to do it. History has it that Anthony Robbins hired a Personal Assistant for the first time when he was a teenager. Why? Because he needed time to focus on the most important tasks for him at the time. Maybe it is time for you to bring in help even if it’s on a part time basis. 

Other tasks can be downgraded. You can choose to reduce the frequency of doing tasks which have minimal impact on the bottom line. There are things on your to do list which are just there to add to the number. Your failure to do them has no adverse effects on your overall output. Such are the things you can downgrade. Only do them after you he done your most important tasks and there’s still time available.

The final category is those things which are ripe for elimination. We must all make a habit of eliminating things of zero consequence from our lives. What is the point of holding on to any activity that adds zero value to us? Some thinkers advocate for the idea of deliberately choosing not to do such a task for an extended period of time to see what gets hurt in the process. If nothing gets hurt, then it is time to get rid.

I must say that at different times, different tasks will have an edge as 20% items depending on what your overall long term goals are. What this therefore means is that you must do periodic reviews of your activities so that at every turn you are focusing on the activities that will yield the highest return and be the best use of your time and other resources. It is also important to note that my most important tasks are not the same as yours. Every one of us has different priorities at different points in time. You must therefore be willing to own your list without apology for as long as you have the rationale behind it. 

Would you like help identifying your 20%? Talk to us in the comments or on asenasam@gmail.com simply indicating ‘What’s my 20%? You can also WhatsApp me on +254725832477. This will earn you a free 15 minute Consulting call.

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