The 80/20 principle
"The 80/20 Principle shows how you can achieve much more with much less effort, time, and resources, simply by concentrating on the all-important 20 percent.". "The pattern of predictable imbalance underlying the 80/20 Principle was first discovered a hundred years ago by Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto while studying income and wealth patterns. But the pattern of "predictable imbalance," as he termed it, crops up throughout life. In The 80/20 Principle, Koch opens our eyes to the way the principle works through a wide range of examples in business, commerce, and virtually every aspect of our lives. For example, 20 percent of products account for 80 percent of sales and profits; similarly, 20 percent of customers account for 80 percent of revenues.". "By identifying and focusing on the 20 percent of our efforts that result in the huge bulk of our success, we can leverage our efforts to vastly increase our effectiveness. For we discover that little of what we do really counts. By concentrating on those things that do, we can transform our effectiveness in our jobs, our careers, our businesses, and our lives."--BOOK JACKET.
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2016–2022years
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What Hacker News says
- Getting Things Done - the 2001 version I read two years ago, I use the general idea and it helps to have a clear head when your fighting fires daily.
Never Split the Difference - some very practical negotiation strategies.
Mini Habits by Stephen Guise - short book but awesome method. I am still doing the one pushup habit since last March.
How to Shoot Video That Doesn't Suck by Steve Stockman - I wanted to improve my video production for my programming course for kids. I am still learning but this book has been a huge help.
The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking by Barbara Minto - huge help with improving my written communication at my job.
The Coaching Habit by Michael Stanier - short book but huge help when your transitioning to managing people.
Made to Stick by Dan Heath - was a huge help in planning how I would teach elementary students last month about programming.
The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch - aside from application of Pareto principle, I took away the idea that books provide the best bang for your buck for knowledge density.
The 4 Hour Work Week - great inspiration to start your own thing.
The $100 Startup - like the 4HWW but with more details.
- The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch. I put off reading it years back when I heard about the principle when I read the 4 hour work week. I thought just a simple groking of the idea was enough. This past year I came across a few posts where people mentioned it, and I decided to give it a read. Well worth it if you are looking for a better way to be more effective.
- This is from Richard Koch's 80/20 Principle:
<quote>Time management often advises people to categorize their list of ‘to do’ activities into A, B, C or D priorities. In practice, most people end up classifying 60-70 per cent of their activities as A or B priorities. They conclude that what they are really short of is time. This is why they were interested in time management to start with. So they end up with better planning, longer working hours, greater earnestness and usually greater frustration too. They become addicted to time management, but it doesn’t fundamentally change what they do, or significantly lower their level of guilt that they are not doing enough.</quote>
My personal method might be to compare these items with each other, and pick 10-20% of them. Randomly list 10 of these and pick one that you want, and discard/archive the rest. If you ask whether you want to read/do something, the answer is always "yeah", but if you compare these with each other, you'll see a pattern. Comparing and deciding is more difficult, by the way, and it results to store less of these in time.
Whatever you do, give up the guilt first. Guilt never leads to productivity or happiness.
