How You Can Apply the 80/20 Rule in Your Life and Work (2024)

FAQs

How You Can Apply the 80/20 Rule in Your Life and Work? ›

Here are a few examples of how the 80/20 rule can apply to your life: Your to-do list: You might find that 20% of the tasks on your to-do list contribute to 80% of your productivity, while the other 80% of tasks contribute to just 20% of your productivity.

You can use the 80/20 rule to prioritize the tasks that you need to get done during the day. The idea is that out of your entire task list, completing 20% of those tasks will result in 80% of the impact you can create for that day.

For business sales, 20% of a company's repeat customers should be responsible for 80% of the sales. Also, 20% of the employees are responsible for 80% of the results. For project management, the first 20% of the effort put in on a project should yield 80% of the project's results.

80% of your weekly tasks affect 20% of your future. 80% of grief is caused by 20% of people in your life. 80% of alarms will be set off by 20% of potential causes. 80% of the energy in a combustion engine produces 20% output.

Recognizing your 20 percent

Simply put, the 80/20 rule states that the relationship between input and output is rarely, if ever, balanced. When applied to work, it means that approximately 20 percent of your efforts produce 80 percent of the results.