Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto, the father of the 80-20 rule, was born in 1848. He was an Italian mathematician, economist, sociologist, and philosopher. Pareto, an engineer by education, used his training to apply mathematical principles to economics. Pareto’s main contribution to the field of economics was “Pareto’s Law of Income Distribution” which can be simplified as:

20 percent of all the people own 80 percent of the wealth in all developed countries.

The 80-20 rule

This may seem familiar, because in the 1950’s Joseph Juran, a management consultant, generalized Pareto’s economic law, as:

For many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes

This statement is know as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, the principle of factor sparsity or the Pareto Principle. By applying this principle to various events, we can suggest ideas like:

• 80 percent of the problems come from 20 percent of the defects
• 80 percent of a company’s revenues come from 20 percent of their customers
• 80 percent of complaints come from 20 percent of customers 
• 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your effort

If you can harness that 20% effort intentionally, you will feel more and more effective and less and less stressed. Success in any project or venture is due to a combination of motivation, time management, and good organizational habits. Organizational habits are the top 20% skills you to be intentional about that 20% of your effort.

Using the 80-20 rule at work

It’s easy to be overwhelmed at work. As you advance and take on more responsibility, expectations increase while your available time and energy decreases. You have more to do than time to do it.  Unless you are ruthless about leveraging your organization skills you will end up chronically ineffective.

You need to understand which of your projects are the most important, not just the most urgent. You need to align your own goals with the goals of your organization and your boss and decide which projects to focus on that align with those goals. Delegate or drop the rest.

Start each day with a plan and review it. Keep a notebook and list important tasks that need to be done (and by whom). Do anything that will take less than 10 minutes immediately. Delegate everything that does’t utilize your unique talents. Give others the chance to shine.

Knowing when to stop

But also, know when to stop. The flip side of this principle is that after the first 20% of effort provides 80% of the result, the next 20% of effort provides only another 10% of result. The third 20% provides only another 3% of results, and so on.

The more effort you put into a project the less of the results it provides. Since the end of a project takes more time than the beginning, you should get feedback early so you can adjust and evolve your work before you have invested too much time into it. I don’t try to be perfect, I try to be good enough. It drives the perfectionists crazy, but I get a lot done and it keeps my customers and supervisors satisfied.