Master your time with 80/20 Rule of Time Management

You may be surprised by the fact that 80% of things in the world are captured by 20% of the people. and this principle of 80/20 is true in most cases around you.

You could see that uneven distribution is almost every aspect of life and business.

80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients.
80% of your traffic comes from 20% of your blogs.
80% of decisions in a meeting are made in just 20% of the time.
80% of land is occupied by 20% of the total population.
You wear 20% of your clothes 80% of the time.

But that doesn’t mean that you should avoid 80%, that means you should make more use of your 20%.

80/20 principle in Time management

The rule of 80/20 has the same effect in the case of time management. 80% of your success is determined by 20% of your time. The 80/20 rule in time management is pretty simple to define. In short, 20% of your efforts will end up producing 80% of your results. So, you should manage your time in a way that focuses on that 20% instead of the other 80% or evenly over the entire 100%. And this is called the Pareto principle.

This principle teaches you how to focus on what’s really important to get succeed in less time. But questions arise about how to understand 20% and 80% in your daily life?

Some examples to understant 80 & 20 in 80/20 principle

If you’re working on tasks that other people want you to, but you have no investment in them, then this task belong to 80% and this didn’t have any great effect on your wealth. For example Your working on a job in which you have zero interest.
If You’re engaged in activities that advance your overall purpose in life (assuming you know what that is —and you should!). These activities belong to 20% of your life, which means a little growth in these areas has a great impact on your life. For example: Working on your dream job or investing your time to set up the desired career.
You’re spending time on tasks you are not usually good at doing and it didn’t have a big impact on your growth but it take too much time. It belongs to 80% and it will be better to hire the person for the specific task. For example, It will be better for a programmer to hire a designer for the project instead of learning designing skills.
If 80 % of your sales come from 20 % of your clients, it makes sense to focus on the further development of your biggest clients or to find new “look-alike” clients.

These examples make it more clear that the 80/20 principle of time management is more about priority.

Now we try to get the point, How we could apply the 80/20 principle of time management in daily life for better results.

Apply 80/20 principle of time management in just 4 steps

Purple and Yellow Soft Rounded Timeline Infographic by Shivam Gautam

1. Identify your 20%

To apply the 80/20 rule to your daily life, First of all, you should identify your 20% first. Write 10 goals that you want to accomplish. Then ask yourself if you could achieve only one or task from the list then which one or two tasks that will be. These two goals or tasks are 20% of all your goals from the list.

These two tasks help you to drive 80% of total success. Make sure that you put the most important stuff on the list at the highest in the priority level. Having a clear priority list helps you to focus on one and most important thing at a time.

2. Do the most important stuff at the begining of the day

You often see the people who appear to be busy all day but could not accomplish enough. This may be due to that at first when they have the energy they use it on less productive or less impactful tasks and when it comes to the most important(20% that bring result) they start to procrastinate or less energy level that needs to achieve the most important(and maybe most difficult) task.

The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex, but the payoff and rewards for completing them can be tremendous. And you start working on that task at the most productive time of the day.

Start your day with the most important task first. Remember the phrase, “Eat the biggest frog first.”

Don’t Miss: Life-saving tips to Stop Procrastination

3. Use the best of your productive hours

Everyone has specific times during the day when they are the most productive. You may do your best work between 9 AM and 11 AM. Or you might get more done between 3 PM and 5 PM. Whenever you feel most productive, focused, and energetic, it is time to tackle the most important task.

Do more 20% of the time and achieve a big result in overall your day.

4. Block the distractions

When you working on your most important tasks you need to eliminate the distraction. Distraction is shiny always captures your attention. In the same way, less productive work will attract you to do them because they require less effort.

You need to concentrate on the most important work at the most important time of the day and that could be possible only if you remove distractions.

You should block all the unwanted and less productive work in the most important 20% time of the day.

Don’t Miss: 18 tips to stop being distracted

Try to understand 80/20 rule of time management with example

Let’s jump to a case scenario of exactly how the 80/20 rule of time can be true. Take the example of bloggers that needs to write quality articles for his customer. The blogger could set a priority in the following order.

A, for the most important task the 20% that will lead him to his key goals. The blogger needs to set a time limit for these activities. For example, one task could be to bring quality content for their visitor. In that time, he should only focus on how he could add value to their visitor life.

B, for the somewhat important tasks, 60% of them. This could be learning something new and useful about his marketing field by reading blogs or talking with professionals about the growth of his blog. For example, He could focus on reading books, blog and learning new skills that require in this field.

C, the least important tasks, the bottom 20%. This might be something like checking his email about a minor website glitch that needs to be fixed or many tasks that could wait. He could hire the person for this least important 20% of his day.

This will help the blogger to focus on things that matter the most for his growth. and help him to stay away from the distractions.

The Last line of 80/20 rule of time management

What I love about this rule is that it helps you put the focus on the right things at the right time whether it’s work, productivity, goal-setting, studies, or just anything in this world. You focus on the most important and most productive tasks at the most productive time of your day. The better use of the most important 20% of time and resources will lead to your overall growth.

Related: 15 pro tips to use your time wisely

For a better understanding of the 20-80 rules in each aspect of life, we recommend you to buy this amazon book by Richard Koch