Time Management - Marc Mancini

Lining Up Your Ducks: Prioritize! 39
The Pareto Principle
Certain numbers (like pi) and shapes (such as the hexagon and
the spiral) somehow recur in nature. They seem to underlie the
fabric of reality itself, in ways that remain largely incomprehensible,
even to scientists and mathematicians.
Time management, too, harbors something that surfaces
with mysterious regularity: the 80/20 formula, also
called the Pareto Principle.
An Italian economist,
Vilfredo Pareto, observed
in 1906 that 20% of
Italians owned 80% of that
nation’s wealth. Over time,
this ratio has been applied
in various situations and
has become a rule of
thumb: the value of a small
number of items in a group
far outweighs that derived
from the other items.
Pareto Principle The
generalization that, in any
group of items, 80% of the
value will be derived from 20% of the
items. If a car owner’s manual, for
example, were to list 20 features, you
can expect to derive 80% of your satisfaction
from the purchase of that
car from only four of those features.
Many people use this principle to
weigh the relative importance of
activities in setting priorities.
How does this translate into real terms? Here are a few concrete
and familiar examples of the Pareto Principle at work:
• 20% of the mail received yields 80% of the value obtained;
the other 80% of the mail is virtually worthless.
• 80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its clients.
• 80% of your time on the phone is spent with only 20% of
the people you call during the course of the year.
• Most people derive 80% of the value they receive from
their computers from 20% of the computer’s functions.
• 20% of a company’s employees take 80% of its sick
leave.
• 80% of the clothes you wear regularly are only 20% of
what hangs in your closet.