The Lonely Savage

In many fields of study, one comes across a principle named The Pareto Principle, or “the law of vital few” or “the principle of factor sparsity”. It states that roughly 80% of an effect comes from 20% of the cause – or vice versa. It tells us that 20% of a company’s clients or customers yield 80% of the company’s income. 20% of the people own 80% of the land. This principle, applied as it is to business and economy, can be found in our everyday lives in surprising and often enlightening ways.

Starting at home
Earlier today, when I was studying the Pareto Principle, I looked over to my book shelf and realized that there were a bunch of things in it that I never used. I tried applying the Pareto Principle to this fact and realized that I probably spend 80% of my time using 20% of my possessions. My MacBook, iPhone and TV and many of my books are probably 20% of the things that I use 80% of the time.

I started going through the contents of these shelves and started building a pile on the floor of things that I don’t use anymore; those 80% of my stuff that I use 20% of the time. The pile quickly filled up with old magazines, printouts, leftover boxes from computer gear, an old SoundBlaster Live sound card, an old internal CD-ROM drive, thirty-something VCR tapes, an old broken Xbox, a PalmPilot from the year 1999 or 2000, instruction manuals from a Solaris 8 Administration Course I attended many years ago, and so on. The pile quickly filled up and now covers the majority of the floor in my living room, and I haven’t even started on my office room, which contains even more stuff. I’ll do that tomorrow.

I probably wear 20% of my clothes 80% of the time. Why can’t I just give the remainder of them to charity? I use 20% of my gaming consoles 80% of the time, so why not sell the other 80% I don’t really need my Playstation 2, Gamecube, Playstation Portable and Gameboy Advance.

I’m not ready to throw away 80% of my books, 80% of my DVDs or 80% of my CDs quite yet, but maybe over time.

Applying it on a wider scale
I’m sure that you’ve already begun wondering how to apply the Pareto Principle to your own life, so let me give you a few more examples of the things that I’ve thought about already.

At the office, 80% of my productivity comes from 20% of the things that I’m actually doing there. Okay, maybe that sounds like I’m idling all the time or doing completely irrelevant things; but that’s not the case. The remaining 80% of my working day, in which I attain the remaining 20% of my productivity, are spent helping colleagues, being disturbed by outside influences, having lunch, taking breaks or attending meetings. This means that during the normal 40 hour work week, I spend 8 hours doing 80% of the actual work, and the remaining 32 hours doing 20% of the work. By organizing myself a little better and making sure to avoid interruptions, I could become far more efficient.

Also at the office, I’ve noticed that about 80% of the issues that come in from our customers are coming from about 20% of the customers. I’m thinking of suggesting to my managers that we offer these customers a free educational package, so that these customers will send fewer issues to us, easing the load on our customer service department.

The third point from the office; we get 80% of our sales from 20% of our customers. By focusing more attention on these customers and less on the remaining 80% of our customers, we’ll be able to build a happier core group of customers and sell them more products.

Where you can find it
Take a look around right now. If you’re at home, look at the things around you; how many of them do you use and how often? Do you really need that thing over there or are you just saving it just in case it might be useful some day? You’ll probably find that only about 20% of your possessions are truly useful to you most of the time while 80% of them are just lying about collecting dust.

If you’re at the office, we can be sure that you’re definitely in the 80% zone where you’re doing 20% of your efficient work. After all, you’re reading a blog entry. Ask yourself at what 20% of the day you’re doing 80% of your efficient work instead. If you’re currently working on a specific project; see how 80% of your time is being spent doing 20% of the real work. Also, ask yourself whether 80% of all interruptions you suffer in your work come from the same 20% of your colleagues.

If you’re a blogger, check your server logs to see which 20% of Google keywords give you 80% of your incoming traffic. If you’re selling Google AdWords, check which 20% of your keywords are giving you 80% of your incoming links.

The value of the Pareto Principle when you implement it into your life is that it reminds you to focus on the 20% that matter. Of the things you do during your day, only 20% really matter. Those 20% produce 80% of your results. Identify and focus on those things. If you’re busy, stressed and overworked, make sure that the things that you cut out of your schedule fall into the 80% of the less useful things; not the 20% of the useful things.

Summing up
The most important thing we can learn from the Pareto Principle is that it’s not only important to do things right, it’s that we need to learn to do the right things. If we focus on the 20% that truly matter, we’ll be saving so much time and effort that’s better spent elsewhere.