Living The 80/20 Way
Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More
Book Written by Richard Koch
“If you could work a two-day week and yet gain much better results and pay than you do for a full week now, would you be interested? You can transform your life if you follow the 80/20 way. If we understand the way the world is really organized – even though that might be completely opposite to what we expect – we can fit in with that way and get much more of what we care about with much less energy. By doing less, we can enjoy and achieve more.” – Richard Koch
Introduction
Maybe you are familiar with The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few) which states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Examples:
- In almost every developed country of the world, 20-percent of
the cities contain 80-percent of the population. - More than 80-percent of the food produced worldwide comes
from far less than 20-percent of land. - 80% of wealth is owned by 20% of people
- 80% of value is achieved with the first 20% of the effort
- 80% of project politics come from 20% of your stakeholders
- 80% of work is completed by 20% of your team
- 80% of software problems are caused by 20% of bugs
- 80% of customers only use 20% of software features
- 80% of sales come from 20% of your clients
- 20% of drivers cause 80% of all traffic accidents
By doing less, you can actually end up achieving more. The key is to make sure you’re doing less of what adds only marginal value (most likely 80-percent of your current tasks) and focus instead on doing better whatever generates the majority of the value you add (the other 20-percent). To find the time to do this, don’t even try doing your marginal value tasks. Instead, focus on your key tasks and completely drop everything else. In practice, the best way to achieve this is to work backwards from where you want to end up:
1. Destination
2. Route
3. Actions
First, describe your destination – something personally motivating which cuts through all the irrelevancies and spells out where you want to end up in terms of personal development, career, money, relationships and quality of life. Define what you really want.
Next, figure out your 80/20 route possibilities. Usually there will be a number of options for reaching your specified destination. Your 80/20 route will be many times more productive than all the other options, and it will be easier for you to do.
Finally, get into action – do the very few things which will help you achieve more with less effort than you ever thought possible. It is only when you actually take action rather than merely knowing what you should be doing that changes will start to occur.
Key Ideas:
Idea 1: Understand The underlying 80/20 principles and laws
The 80/20 principle states in every field of human endeavor, a mathematical relationship holds true under which 20-percent of the items provide 80-percent of the value. High performers achieve that status by focusing more intensively on the key 20-percent activities. In this way, they can achieve spectacular results with less effort, not more. This principle is so well established in business that it would be a shame not to take advantage of it in other areas of your life as well – in self development, in your personal relationships and in your approach to money, work and success.
The 80/20 principle leads to the two laws:
- The law of focus – less is more.
- The law of progress – we can create more with less.
Idea 3: Learn to use the 80/20 principles to make a life and a living
There are five key areas in your life where the 80/20 principle and the laws of focus and progress can and should be applied in order to enhance your personal productivity:
1. Self
2. Work and success
3. Money
4. Personal relationships
5. Simple, good life
In each of these areas, you should follow a three-step process which will enable you to make dramatic improvements in productivity and accomplishment:
1. 80/20 DestinationSpecify your 80/20 destination – where you want to be and what you want to achieve. This will be a personal destination you alone know. Your 80/20 destination will be what you genuinely care about from all the options and possibilities open to you. A good 80/20 destination will get down to what really matters to you on a level that is intensely exciting.
2. 80/20 Routes
Find the best 80/20 route to your destination – something that is elegant and relatively easy to do. There will always be a large number of possibilities to consider, but your 80/20 route will offer more for less. It will be a smart solution which is simultaneously better and easier. As a rule-of-thumb, the optimum 80/20 route will be the most fun and least worrisome of all the options you can visualize. Instead of offering more achievement for more effort, it will hold the promise of more achievement for substantially less effort. Your 80/20 route will most likely be based on your strengths rather than attempting to remedy your weaknesses.
3. 80/20 Actions
Take 80/20 action – when you know your 80/20 destination and have your 80/20 route clearly in mind, you’re then in a position to move. You can interpret and exploit chance events productively. You can take advantage of unanticipated opportunities that open up. It’s in acting that your life will be transformed for the better, not just in knowing what you should be doing.
Idea 2: Develop your personalized 80/20 plan
Irrespective of where you’re starting from, it is possible to change your life by taking some 80/20 actions. These will be relatively easy actions which will make an inordinately large difference to your personal happiness and to the happiness of those closest to you. Interestingly, taking 80/20 action doesn’t require that you change how you feel first. Instead, it suggests that if you do the smart thing and take the few right actions required, your feelings will take care of themselves. In the final analysis, the 80/20 principle will only make a change in your life when you get into action and do things differently. It’s not what you know but what you do that counts.
“We get more reward with less energy if we adopt rewarding habits earlier rather than later. We get more happiness with less effort if we carefully select a few excellent habits we’d like to have and master these, not bothering about all the other good habits we could in theory cultivate. There’s a limit to the number of good habits most of us can practice. Yet a few habits can have a phenomenal effect on our happiness throughout life – we get a massive bonanza from a little up-front effort.” – Richard Koch
“Having an idea, or a fantasy, or a passion – and acting on it. Step out of a life of duty, where everything runs on predictable lines dictated by other people, into a life created by your own imagination. Forget hard work and think, imagine, create and enjoy.” – Richard Koch
“Money is for freedom, not slavery; for security, not worry. Unless money is used to give you greater freedom and happiness, accumulating money is a burden.” – Richard Koch
A recent survey of AOL subscribers asked how much more money they would need for them to be free of worrying about money. It turned out those with incomes over $100,000 thought they needed far more money than those with incomes under $40,000. The high earners were five times more likely to say they needed at least another $90,000 annual income. This should tell us that once we pursue more with more, we can never, ever win, never be satisfied. More with more leads to less fraternity and happiness; more with less leads to a life of higher quality, worth and deep personal satisfaction.” – Richard Koch
“To change our lives, we have to make things easier on ourselves – we have to achieve decisive change, but without superhuman effort. This is where the 80/20 way is so different and so much more effective, for two reasons. One, the 80/20 way does not require us to change how we feel. That will come later, naturally, without any strain, as our actions produce the desired results. Two, we don’t have to increase the effort and energy we already bring to our daily lives. By focusing on less is more – the very few things that really matter to us – we can transform our lives while exerting less effort and having fewer worries than now. If we are highly selective about what we want and limit ourselves to the key things that express our individuality, we can be lazier and yet act more effectively. By using the idea of more with less, we can find a much better solution that uses less energy. The secret of 80/20 action is to be parsimonious in our positive actions. Be stingy and economical with your energy. There’s a limited amount of it. Only use it in those few actions that can really make you happy and powerful.” – Richard Koch
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