THE WISDOM BEHIND THE 80-20 RULE

According to the 80-20 rule which is also called Pareto principle, our best results come from small portion of great efforts. To make it clear, numbers are used to mean that 80% of our results come from only 20% of our efforts.

This rule is applicable in many situations such as :

In education:  We normally concentrate in studies for short period of time, and the rest is just used to do other things which may not really produce great benefits. Remind yourself the time you are in a group discussions. Most of the time you may use to talk other issues not really related to the subject, or just trying to resolve unnecessary arguement because someone wants to win the debate.

In organizations:You may have alot of Facebook fans for your organization, but only few of them really do business with you. Or you may be holding great amounts and types of inventories but, most of your sales come from few of your types of inventories.

In personal life: You may be engaged  in many activities, having lots of friends, but only few of them really matter.

So, what is the usefulness of this rule ?

• The 80/20 rule reminds us that if we want to be efficient, we should do our best to find out the 20% of our efforts that really brings 80% of the results. When we find the efforts which are the main cause of our success, we can then concentrate on them, and leave those activities that we do but they don't have any positive effects on our lives or our organizations.

• The 80/20 rule reminds us to find out what we are really best at. We then do a lot of what we are best at, and less of what we are not.

• The rule reminds us to wisely manage our time, because it doesn't pay to spend our time on things that don't achieve positive results to us.

For your information

Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. ( Wikipedia)