The 80/20 Principle For Maximum Results

Hello guys. So in this lecture we're gonna be talking about the 80 20 principle. Now I'm pretty sure that a lot of you are familiar with the principle. Some of you are not. I read about it in different books and I even read an entire book about the 1820 principle and that's when I realized that the 80 20 principle is one of the most important principles when it comes to proper time management. So let's get to it. This principle is generally known as the or principle after its founder the Italian economist the federal credo. It was the first person to actually realize that the 80 20 principle is actually a thing. Now of course it's not something that you can always generalize but most of the cases the 80 20 principle is really really efficient. And when you say economist you say statistics so you can know that coming from an economic background the guy knows what he's talking about because economy is based on statistics mostly. Right. So what is the 80 20 principle. I'll give a few examples to be able to explain it properly. 80 percent of the value is achieved with the first 20 percent of the effort 80 percent of the work is completed by 20 percent of your team 80 percent of software problems are caused by 20 percent of the bugs. So in short roughly 80 percent of these effects come from 20 percent of the causes. And if we want to reflect that into productivity 80 percent of your accomplishments come from 20 percent of your To Do list. And think about it. Look at your to do list and see how many tasks would directly contribute towards whatever goals you have and how many tasks would just be a waste of your time or or they won't help you reach your goals. But these are tasks that you need to do for any reason. I'll give a couple extended examples. Let's say you have a fitness goal you want to gain weight. You want to increase the size of your muscles so you go to the gym five days a week and you have a diet right. So I'm just going to focus on the exercises at the gym I'm going to play the 80 20 rule for the exercises at the gym. You have different exercises. You have some isolation exercises and you have some compound movements and you're eventually your goal is to gain more weight than to increase your mass. And for those of you who do know and those of you don't usually come from movements help you the most. And in terms of mass rape however you need to add a lot of more isolation cardio some body weight training. But eventually 80 percent of the mass that you got out of your worked out came from 20 percent of the exercises that are the compound movements. If you're making an app for example the first 20 percent of the code constitute the 80 percent essential code that you need for your app. The rest is just fixing bugs for example adding some front end designs for the app. If you have a marketing strategy 80 percent of the revenue would come from 20 percent of the marketing strategies that you're following the rest of them are contributing for the 20 percent that is left but the majority of the results come from the 20 percent 20 percent of the marketing campaign or the marketing strategy that you're following. So now that you understand the 80 20 principle of course you're wondering how does that affect time management. So the point is you need to focus on the critical 20 percent to achieve the 80 percent of your goal. And of course as I said before these are statistics. They're not always accurate. Sometimes it's 90 10 sometimes it's 70 30 wherever it is. But usually there is a smaller percentage that contributes the most towards your goals and that's what you need to focus on the critical 20 or 30 or 15 percent that's what you need to focus on when it comes to time management. So as you guys can see what's written in the presentation the key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule but schedule your priorities. So you can't build can't write down a schedule and then prioritize your schedule needs to be based on your priorities on the critical 20 per if you have then asks a day two of those tasks are the most important two of these tasks are more important than all the eight combined. Think about it. Put it to do list but whatever you have to do for the day and try to pinpoint the crucial and critical things to do that will eventually help you achieve your goals. What are these two tasks. And once you realize what these tasks are and you become aware of the 80 20 principle now you need to start building a schedule based on these priorities. You need to build a schedule or a plan built based on these critical points. A lot of people disregard this rule because they think oh I mean it's common sense. Yeah I'm going to focus more on on the things that will eventually help me accomplish my goals but they encounter a lot of issues. First is one of the biggest issues is this time management people and that's why we're talking about it right here. People usually procrastinate. The most important tasks of the day that accounts for 80 percent of the results and busy themselves instead with the least important tasks. And usually because the crucial 20 percent are usually harder than the 80 percent that is rest. So they want to finish these 80 percent to feel that oh I mean I did a lot today and then they end up not doing the critical 20 percent which is completely wrong. You need to focus on the 20 percent first before focusing on the on the 80 percent that is left. And of course we're gonna talk later on in further lectures on how to use procrastination to your favor. But for now I want you guys to be aware that this is one of the issues we tend to procrastinate. The most critical and important tasks that will eventually help us accomplish our goals. We need to be aware of this and the second thing is prioritizing. We said before that your schedule needs to be based on your priorities. You can't build a schedule and then prioritize the tasks your schedule needs to be based on your priorities. I'm repeating it because it's very important to know that starting with the 80 percent instead of the 20 percent is you setting yourself up to fail because you guys will see. We talked about it before that willpower gets drained. It's a limited resource. So when you start with the 80 percent are not as important when you get to the 20 percent that are big task and that are mainly linked directly towards you accomplishing your goals you will feel that you don't have the willpower to do these task and even if you find some willpower to start doing these tasks you won't be able to follow through and finish these tasks effectively. And of course that brings us to the last issue which is the will the willpower that we talked about in order for you to be able to start with the 20 percent instead of starting with the 80 percent. You need willpower. So you need to cultivate willpower to be able to follow these priorities. Taking the easy way out by starting with the easy tasks does not mean that you won't consume willpower because we are resisting temptations on a daily basis every single second every single minute. We are resisting temptations because at any given moment there are certain thoughts going into our heads recurring into our mind you want to do things you want to go eat you want to do this you want to do that and you use your willpower to tame these desires or these temptations or whatever. So even if you're even if you're avoiding the big task in tackling the easy task instead to just feel this fake satisfaction it will affect your willpower. And as I said before you will get to the point where you need to start with a 20 percent but your willpower will be so drained that you can't even start. So what should you do. As simple as that you need to apply these rules when you have a list. You should start with the most important task not the longest or the hardest. Sometimes the biggest the biggest tasks the 20 percent are not the longest or the hardest. Sometimes they are most of the times they are but it's not a general rule. Sometimes they're the most complicated but that doesn't mean that they're the longest or the hardest. That means that they need a lot of thinking they need a clear mind to just sit down and think about them. Some of them are hard some of them are long as some of them are just easy right. But you just need to know the value of whatever you're doing. If a task is more valuable than all of the rest even if it's harder or more complex or even if it's easier no matter what it is based on value you need to start with it. And the second thing is related to habit and we're going to talk there about habits but never go on a task and the 80 percent if you still haven't finished the 20 percent tasks a lot of people tend to do that they start with a 20 percent critical task and they finish half of it and then they say oh you know what I'm gonna finish the rest of it later on today. Right now I'm gonna do some other things. So what's happening right there you're procrastinating you are procrastinating. The crucial 10 percent that is left in order for you to waste your time doing the 80 percent. That is not as important. And the last thing is that you need to become aware of these problems. And now that you've finished this lecture you are way more aware of these problems. The next time you're going to be writing down a schedule you're going to remember that you need to put these critical 20 percent in your head before writing your schedule and you need to write your schedule accordingly. You will know that every single time you're going to start with your schedule you're going to start with the critical 20 percent and every single time your mind tells you that oh let's stop and move to the 80 percent you're going to know that no you're going to fall into procrastination and this is bad. You need to stick with the critical 20 percent as soon as you're done with the critical 20 percent then you're good to go. You can move to the 80 percent and usually as I said the 80 percent are easier and therefore they do require willpower but they require less willpower and these these 80 percent that are left. Even if you have one or two tasks that you couldn't accomplish because I mean we all get tired at one point. If you procrastinate these two tasks that are left you're not procrastinating on your priorities you're procrastinating on. Second their priorities that you can always do the other day the next day or during the weekend or whenever you have a few minutes to spare. Along the course there are gonna be a lot of different exercises and resources that you guys need to look at and take them seriously because these resources are there to help you manage your time properly and just grasp the concept of time management by the room.