How To Get A Lot Of Work Done In A Short Amount Of Time

In 1895, Vilfredo Pareto sought to know the  distribution of wealth  in Italy . This led him to research more. He discovered that 80% of Italy’s wealth was owned by 20% of the population. He then extended his research to many more countries and discovered the same pattern.

Today, 20% of the world’s population controls 82.7% of the world’s income. If you look at Nigeria, for instance, the wealthy are few, the middle class and poor are very many, yet wealth is control and owned by a “vital few”.

In the early 1950s, Joseph Jurian observed that Pareto’s research was not only applicable to  economics but was a “universal principle”. This gave room for more exploration. 

The Pareto principle states that 80% of your productivity will come from 20% of the activities you do.  This also means 80% of the consequences (trivial many) you face come from 20% of the causes (vital few).

I decided to bring this to my place of work. I differentiated those workers whose presence give high productivity from those whose presence has little or nothing to help the office and discovered roughly 20% of the population are yielding 80% productivity. 

If we bring this principle to our churches, we will discover that the population keeping the church moving is just 20% while the rest 80% does little or nothing yet the church is moving. 

Streamlining this principle to goal setting, our most valuable tasks most of the time do not occupy us like those tasks that are not valuable. Most times we ignore our most important tasks to execute many less/unimportant tasks. But the Pareto principle will help you channel your energy on the 20% tasks that will yield high productivity.

“The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous” Brian Tracy

The  80/20 principle gives you power, focus and clarity on how to execute your goals to achieve optimum success. It gives you a sense of direction on where to direct your energy to achieve a great result. 

Let's nailed it here:

List out ten important goals of yours that you want to achieve in life.  If God was to grant only one request, which of the goals will you choose first? Tick it. If He was to grant you a second request, which of them will you choose next? Tick it.  Now, these two out of ten is your 20%. You need to focus and put more energy on these two and less energy on the remaining 8 which are your 80% trivial many.  

Remember, “Effective Productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them” Brian Tracy.

The most important tasks here are activities for your 20% goals. 

John Ukpanukpong.