And to take it a step further… once you focus more on the 20 percent of what you do (increasing that 20 to 30, 40, 50 etc… while cutting down or decreasing the 80 percent wasted ) Things will realign themselves in such a way that 20 percent of your NEW actions will account for 80 percent of your production.

The cycle towards ultimate productivity will never end.

The risk of only focusing on the 20% is that what if some of the other 80% of your clients grow big. They will resent you for not paying any attention to them, and that is the key risk. Things are always evolving.

Probably because the 80% that aren’t are more fun.

“What would you do if I told you that 80% of your efforts are (in many cases) largely wasted, producing only 20% of your results? I’d be willing to bet that you’d take a closer look at how you spend your time and make some changes.

While it’s arguable whether or not the numbers really work out to 80/20 in any particular case, the larger point still stands… The majority of your productivity typically comes from a minority of your efforts.

By looking critically at how you spend your time/effort, you can dramatically improve your productivity. Try to identify the things that produce the most results and focus on doing them. Likewise, try to shun (or at least streamline) activities that don’t produce much in the way of results.”

Bold emphasis added. The only reason I turned it around was to emphasis what a colossal waste of time that “other” 80% of your time is.

“Try to identify the things that produce the most results and focus on doing them.”

In other words, find those things that you do in the productive 20% of your time and expand on them. I only turned it around to provide a different (and hopefully shocking) perspective.

80/20 rule is largely useful for segmenting clients, if you have any.

With friends, 80 percent of the true friendship (and good advice) comes from 20 percent of my friends, including my Mom.

In writing, the really good stories comprise about 20 percent of my total output (on good days!)

Looking at how the 80/20 rule plays out, it would seem that the 80 percent is not really worthwhile.

But it is.

We can’t be hyper efficient all the time, and more importantly, without the 80 percent, we wouldn’t ever get to the super special 20 percent. Sometimes it is necessary to spin some wheels and to take chances because we don’t know what is going to pan out and what won’t.

I hate to see this applied to money, because that means we need to spend more to buy the stuff that turns out to be very valuable to us!

Hmmm, maybe it’s worth spending some time trying to circumvent the 80/20 rule on purchases.

That’s a discipline that once learned could be truly revolutionary.

Practically speaking, the 20% of functions that are most productive can probably be easily identified as also being the ones we like to do least, maybe because we inherently know that the stakes are higher, and of course, so is the stress attached to them.

It is actually crazy that you posted this today (especially the reference made to JD @ GRS.) because I have plans to go through my wardrobe and get rid of most of my clothes… no joke.

Now… I am even more motivated to go get it done ASAP – and will also be applying the concept to my Time Management (another focus of mine lately.)

Great stuff Nickel.