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How to apply the Pareto Principle to your activity?

Updated: May 26, 2020



What is the Pareto Principle?

In an abbreviated and simple way, the Pareto Principle was first considered by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1986, when he collaborated with the University of Lausanne – Switzerland.

This principle is very interesting and known as the 80/20 Rule.

This rule explains that you just need a minority of effort, inputs and causes that lead to the majority of results, outputs and rewards intended by a person. This means that 80 % of everything you achieve comes from just 20% of your effort, energy and activity.

We can conclude that by this Pareto principle, most of our effort maybe is not useful. So we should concentrate on those 20% to achieve 80% of our success.

By Pareto's philosophy, there’s always correlations between:


. Causes and Effects;

. Inputs and outputs;

. Efforts and Rewards.


This sometimes causes us imbalance and some embarrassment or even dullness.

So, we should learn how to manage time. This is so important!

If you have a good product or service to offer your clients or students… you tend to think everyone is going to valuate your product the same way. That’s not true.


By the Pareto principle, you should concentrate on the minority or the majority?


In this case, the Pareto principle will help you to understand in how you can better manage your time to increase your productivity, because you should never forget that this imbalance means that maybe the minority of your inputs will generate the majority of outputs or results. That is the challenge and not what you think it’s often obvious for the most part of us. In that gap minority, sometimes hidden, is where you can find your balance. So, think about it.

This also means that with only 20% of your precious productive time of the day you will open your eyes for what it’s meaningful to achieve 80% of the results, and that only about 20% of your clients or customers are responsible for 80% of your sales, outcomes or profits. Crazy, isn’t it?

But not farther from the truth.


All the other tasks you should delegate to use the same principle and so on.

Managers should be aware of that. Make good choices is an ability only for a few.

That is the reason because Productivity is so dependent on Time Management, allowing you to do more in less time.


How to practice? Here's an example.



And here's a Pareto Chart.

Make the changes you need.

Best wishes for an excellent job.





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