The Pareto Principle says that around 80 percent of the effects arise from around 20 percent of the causes. In business, a rule of thumb is that 80 percent of output is produced by 20 percent of the workers, 80 percent of the sales come from 20 percent of the products, and so on.
The principle became popular in 1997 when author Richard Koch wrote a best-selling book called The 80/20 Principle. Yet it goes all the way back to Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who, at the end of the 19th century, observed that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by around 20 percent of the population.
The principle is less mysterious than it sounds. The richest half of the population has to own more than half of the wealth, because, if not, it would not be the richest half. The same goes for other examples. But how far does the imbalance typically go?
The Pareto Principle just says that, in naturally occurring distributions, like country populations or article views, the imbalance is often larger than we would expect. For example, 85 percent of the world’s population (2024 data) lives in the 20 percent most-populous countries.
Natural and social scientists call these large imbalances power laws. Another example is Zipf’s law, which applies to examples such as the population of cities or how often are words used. It says that the largest value is often roughly twice the second-largest, three times the third, four times the fourth, and so on.
For example, according to the 2020 census, New York had 8.8 million inhabitants, which is a bit more than twice the size of Los Angeles (3.9 million), a bit more than three times the size of Chicago (2.75 million), and almost four times the size of Houston (2.3 million).
The Pareto Principle and Your Time
What does this mean for you? I argue that it means that you are often wrong about how much you will get out of a task or project.
Make a list of (similar) tasks you have to do at work, or of personal interests. What this list contains depends on your job and your interests. It might be clients, projects, topics to write about, books to read, games to buy, or trips to plan.
For each list, you should think about what you want to get from each item. Maybe it’s income from clients, or number of views for blog posts, or something more fuzzy like your personal enjoyment and satisfaction.
Whatever it is, not all items on your list give you the same amount of what you want. No surprise there.
But what the Pareto Principle says is that the difference is probably much larger than you think. Most (around 80 percent) of your income, views, personal development, satisfaction, and enjoyment probably come from just a small part (around 20 percent) of the items on your list.
That means that you could drop many of them, saving a lot of your time, for little cost.
The Vital Few and the Trivial Many
In management, items (products, projects, issues, etc.) are sometimes classified into an A-B-C scheme. “A” items are the best 20 percent, also called the vital few, which give 80 percent of the results. “B” items are the next 30 percent, which give around 10 percent of the results. ‘‘C’’ items, also called the trivial many, are the worst 50 percent, which give only 10 percent of the results.
You should drop the trivial many and concentrate on the vital few. But which one is which? If your results are quantifiable (product sales, blog views, and so on), this might be easy. Drop projects which give low results and demand a lot of your time. Concentrate on the topics that give you the most results.
If the results you want are more subjective—i.e. personal satisfaction, enjoyment, or career development—telling apart the vital few and the trivial many is harder. Here are some hints. If any of the following apply to an item in your list, it is probably one of the vital few.
- You can immediately tell how the task helps your goals, even if you do not like it.
- It makes you feel better about yourself.
- You don’t keep track of time when working on it.
If any of the following apply to another item, it is probably one of the trivial many.
- You keep putting it off until the last minute.
- It always takes longer than you expected.
- You are not good at it, or it frustrates you.
- Somebody else wants you to complete it, but you do not feel a personal investment.
When to Delegate
You cannot always drop the trivial many. In programming, a rule of thumb is that 80 percent of a program is written in 20 percent of the time. The final 20 percent of the code will take 80 percent of the time, but the entire program needs to be written if it has to work. This is true for many other activities. You cannot drop the trivial many if they are necessary parts of something larger.
The solution is to delegate and specialize. For example, consider Jane, a marketing analyst who loves doing the actual data analysis and drawing graphics but dislikes writing the summary report. She will complete the analysis in 20 percent of her time and struggle with the written report in the remaining 80 percent.
Jane should delegate the writing. This might not mean dumping boring work on a subordinate. Often, collaboration is key, because Jane’s 80 percent might be somebody else’s 20 percent. Consider Jack, who hates running the statistical analyses, but is very good at writing. With Jane’s results and figures, he will write the report in 20 percent of his time. If Jane collaborates with Jack, everybody wins.
Look at your list again. Can you delegate what you do not enjoy? Can you collaborate with somebody whose skills and interests complement your own? That might help you concentrate on your vital few even if the trivial many still need to be done.
This post is part of a series on Reclaiming Your Time. Next time, we will look at how steering away from multitasking can make you more effective.