Time Management - Marc Mancini
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<strong>Time</strong> <strong>Management</strong><br />
The Pareto Principle offers a powerful tool for change. More<br />
value is derived from the time you spend targeting 20% of your<br />
clients than from the time you spend on the other 80%. Your<br />
telephone’s speed-dial list should probably be updated to<br />
account for the 20% of people you actually call regularly. Those<br />
who read your reports will probably derive 80% of the value you<br />
put in them from 20% of the information.<br />
Remember when your parents had days when they received<br />
no mail? Remember when people had only three or four TV channels?<br />
(If you’re too young to remember this and can’t believe it,<br />
ask your parents or grandparents.) Those were the days when the<br />
Pareto Principle touched only a few people’s lives and in only limited<br />
ways. But now? Consider the following statistics:<br />
• Americans receive 15 billion faxes yearly; that figure is<br />
expected to double every two to three years.<br />
• 50,000 books are published yearly in the United States.<br />
• The American reading public has about 11,000 magazines<br />
to choose from.<br />
• The average cable television system carries over 100<br />
channels and emerging technology could expand that to<br />
well over 500 choices.<br />
• You’ll probably spend eight months out of your life going<br />
through the mail.<br />
It has become impossible to keep abreast of the stream of<br />
information that washes past us. To stay ahead, people must<br />
become selective. They must concentrate on that 20% of information<br />
that yields 80% of the value and reject the rest.<br />
This principle can be so broadly applied that the examples<br />
are virtually unlimited. Keeping in mind that 80% of your value<br />
to your company almost certainly derives from 20% of your<br />
work product (and from 20% of the time you spend at work),<br />
you might consider searching for ways to improve that ratio.<br />
Real productivity—and the advancement that very often accompanies<br />
it—may well be a function of discovering how to make<br />
the most of the Pareto Principle.