The Pareto principle (the 80:20 rule) in time management | Spica (2024)

The Pareto principle in time management states that 80 % of results will come from 20 % of your effort. Consequently,being aware of the Pareto principle can mainly help us set the rightpriorities.

It can help us to focus on activities that will have the biggestimpact in our business and personal lives.

The uneven distribution of tasks you do everyday: 20% of your tasks contribute to about 80% of the total success in yourorganization.

Let’s look at the main ideas on how the Pareto principle help us set theright priorities in business.

We are all automatically drawn to tasks and activities that don’t have realimpact

Unimportant and small-impact tasks have a tendency to get in the way ofimportant ones - the ones that could have a real impact on our career orbusiness. There’s a simple reason why that happens.

Impactful tasks are usuallymuch harder to execute in comparison to non-impactful tasks. That’s why we are automaticallydrawn to the latter.

Let’s look at a few practical examples:

• It’s mucheasier to polish a sales presentation than to make 20 sales calls.
• It’s mucheasier to brainstorm, hold meetings or debate different tactics than to chooseone of the options and execute it perfectly.
• It’s mucheasier to go for marginal improvements on a product than to look for a new,disruptive innovation that could give a company a new competitive edge.
• It’s mucheasier to answer e-mails, chat with colleagues, and give in to otherdistractions, than to do the deep work - creating and delivering what you arepaid to.

Simply put, it’s so hard to prioritize because the most important tasksare hard to execute. They require creativity, diligence, focus, deep work andother types of mental effort.

Next to that, we are many times not even aware ofbad prioritization. We’re not aware of how low-impact tasks highjack our day,and we automatically let real progress and advancement slip.

And you alreadyknow the problem. Urgent, but unimportant tasks, and tasks that give you a fakefeeling of progress, can take up to 80 % or even more of your time.

But theimpact of those unimportant tasks is minimal in terms of the advancement ofyour career, or business advancement. That’s where the Pareto principle comesin handy.

The Pareto principle in time management can help us prioritize tasks

The Pareto principle can help us see the bigpicture as to what to focus on for the fastest advancement in our business life.It gives us a real representation of how unevenly impact can be distributed,and consequently guidance on what tasks to focus on to get the best results.

For example:

• If 80 % of your sales come from 20 % of yourclients, it makes sense to focus on the further development of your biggestclients or to find new “look-alike” clients.
• If your boss appreciates 20 % of your output, whichhas, in his view, an 80% impact on the organization’s goals, it makes sense tofocus more on that 20 % of tasks.
• If 2 out of 10 time wasters (email, meetings,coworker interruptions, phone calls, social media, instant messaging and othernotifications, daily news, logistics, TV, gossiping etc.) are responsible for80 % of your time wasted, it makes sense to identify those 2 time wasters andeliminate or minimize them.

And let’s not forget, you can shorten businessmeetings up to 80 % if you focus meetings on the agenda and decision making. Makesure the Pareto principle works in your favor, not against you.

So, askyourself the following questions:

• What 20 %of your tasks will really help you get promoted?
• With what20 % of your tasks are you really helping your organization to grow?
• With what behaviorsthat you rarely engage in (less than 20 % of time) are you destroying 80 % ofyour chances for success? Are you being too argumentative? A bad team worker?, Lateto work, etc.?
• Which oneor two activities are responsible for 80 % of your time wasted?

You can do the same exercise in your personal life, when trying toachieve a work-life balance. Try to analyze with which activities you wastetime and get nowhere because they are easy to do, and which activities shouldbe your number one priority in free time.

The 20 % of tasks in your business or career that you should be focused on

In business, everything is about creating value for the market. Thus,tasks with the biggest impact are all the ones connected to creating value,delivering value and capturing value for the customers.

These three types ofactivities are nicely presented on the business model canvas or personal-businessmodel canvas:

You can contribute to creating, delivering, andcapturing value directly (being in R&D, sales etc.) or indirectly. So, theimportant tasks to work on are the bottom-line deliveries you are actually paidfor or the customers pays for.

At least 80 % of your time should be spentsolely on these important, impactful activities, and you should always have afew KPIs that help you to focus and measure your work on the most productivetasks.

• Creatingvalue includes: Strategic planning, creating new, innovative products and valuepropositions, engaging resources, forming strategic partnerships, etc.
• Deliveringvalue includes: Optimizing distribution channels, forming customerrelationships, marketing products, sales, and so on.
• Capturingvalue means: Forming new business models, finding better interest rates fordebt financing, optimizing costs, etc.

Based on the creating-delivering-capturing value framework, you shouldidentify the key results areas in your business. These key-results areas can besales, marketing, customer service, product development, finding betterpartners or employees etc.

Or, in the case of your personal career they can be bringingmore revenue in, generating new leads, suggesting organizational improvements, etc.Then you should focus your time on these key result areas.

And after focusing on the key results areas (macro focusing), you shouldalso consider the Pareto principle when micro focusing - for example decidingon which clients, innovations, marketing tactics etc. to focus on, and thenexecuting those tasks perfectly.

On the other hand, the activities which youshould usually avoid and fall into the 20% are:

• Urgenttasks, which are not important (based on the Eisenhower matrix)
• Tasks youare not really good at
• Otherpeople’s tasks that you are not invested in (which were somehow off-loaded onyou)
• Tasks you couldeasily delegate or outsource to your team
• Tasks thatare way out of your comfort zone
• Typicaltime wasters – meetings, gossiping, etc.

Don’t be skeptical - track your time and see it for yourself

Many people are skeptical about the Pareto principle and unevendistribution, until they analyze how they spend their time and how much theyreally work on the activities that bring actual progress.

The best way to seeit for yourself is to simply track your time. Only what you measure can youreally manage.

You can simply use a free time tracker like My Hours for a fewweeks and analyze how much time you have spent on the important and impactfulactivities, and how much on low-value activities. Usually, people are surprisedhow much time goes to waste.

The benefit of a time tracker is not only for reporting or billingpurposes, but also to help you remain constantly aware of the Pareto principle.

It helps you to set the right priorities before you hit the start button on thetime tracker. And if you are a manager, you can achieve the same for your teamand help them become aware of the real important tasks to make sure the othersdon’t just highjack the day.

No matter if you use a time tracker or not, you should have regularperiodical reviews of your projects and tasks to recalibrate your focus overand over again onto the 20 % tasks. Employing the Pareto principle in practicein time management is not a one-time job, but a never-ending process.

A few time-management tactics to help you stay put with the Paretoprinciple

For the last part,let’s look at some time-management tactics to help you stay focused onthe most important tasks that you’ve defined based on the concept of the Paretoprinciple:

1. Beruthless with which tasks you let on your to-do list

Don’t just let any task enter your to-do list. Don’t let just anybodyinterrupt you for a few minutes. Don’t be reactive, be proactive with yourtime. Otherwise, your day will be quickly highjacked and your productivity willsuffer.

Being proactive means being ruthless with which tasks you put on yourto-do list, especially if those tasks are enforced by others. Even if you get atask delegated from your boss, if you know that you have other more importantpriorities, speak politely with them and explain your point of view.

2. Delegate,outsource, and automate where possible

The point ofunderstanding the Pareto principle is to focus yourself on the tasks with thebiggest impact and not letting “the other” tasks get in the way. But somethingmust be done about these other, low-impact tasks.

Well, they can just stay undone (if they have zero impact orconsequences), delegated to subordinates, and maybe even outsourced orautomated.

That’s what a good and highly-organized manager does – theyunderstand what their number one priorities are and what tasks to delegate towhich team members, or maybe even not to bother with.

3. Timeboxdeep work

Timeboxing means that you open your calendar and enter a block of timethat you’ll spend on a certain task in the future. It’s like scheduling a meetingin your calendar, nothing different.

Once you reserve a box of time in your calendar, you should treat itlike a scheduled meeting – no rapid rescheduling and no distractions during thescheduled time.

It’s the time that you reserve in advance to do the deep workon the most important tasks of the day. You should plan 2 – 3 boxes of time ina day that last for 1 – 2 hours to do the real productive work.

Learn more about timeboxing.

4. Startwith the most important task for the day

In time management there is a very popular saying by Brian Tracy: “eatthat frog”. The main idea is to start the day with the most important tasks, nomatter how hard it is.

In the morning, your mental focus in usually thestrongest. Not only that, but if you do the hardest task in the morning,everything else in the day is easy to do.

So, it makes sense to reserve a boxof time first thing in the morning to work in peace during the most importanttime of the day.

5. Eliminateas many distractions and interruptions as possible

There are so many potential distractions and interruptions today - fromphone calls, app notifications, chat messages and coworkers stopping by. Studiesshow that an employee is interrupted somewhere between 4 to 12 times everyhour. That’s one interruption or even more every 15 minutes.

With all these distractions and interruptions, the working day can endbefore you know it- with zero productive work done. So, make sure you eliminateas many distractions as possible at your work.

And not only during yourtimeboxed work, but in general during your working day. You can learn moreabout handling distractions and interruptions at workhere.

And now, the final thought to end this article with - don’t forget, thePareto Principle also works in the opposite way.

So, ask yourself - Which 20%of things (tasks, people, activities…) are causing you 80% of your problems andunhappiness in your career? And now find some good ways to improve yoursituation.