Benefits of habit “Follow 80/20 rule”
✓ Increased productivity
✓ Improved time management
✓ Reduced time waste
✓ Improved organizational skills
First step:
Organize 1 workday by 80/20 rule
Progress:
1. This morning, start by organizing your whole work day by using 80/20 rule. This this once this week.
2. Next week, do the same to 2 workdays.
3. Keep increasing, until your entire workweek is organized according to 80/20 rule.
4. If you have limited time available for leisure, organize your free days according to the same rule.
Helpful tips to make it a habit:
✓ Same time is key. Do your planning sessions at the same time. We recommend early morning, before the grunt of the work starts. Also, doing same things at the same time is a great way to turn it into a habit.
✓ Trigger your mind. Have your calendar open up first thing when you open your laptop or computer. It’s a great way to see what you have to start your day with and in this case, it will always be the 80/20 rule.
✓ Let the app help. You may also use the reminder function on this app to ring when it’s time to plan.
✓ Reward yourself. Once you’ve gone 2 weeks of successfully using 80/20 rule for your work, celebrate it letting go of planning on your free days and doing something spontaneous. You never know what fun lies around the corner.
Tips for beginners:
✓ Definitions. 80/20 rule or The Pareto Principle, named after its inventor Vilfredo Pareto, is the principle which states that 20% of your tasks are of vital importance and can bring in the most productivity and monetary gain, while 80% of tasks are trivial and must not be touched until the 20% are done with.
✓ Assigning value. Most important thing about learning to use the Pareto principle, is assigning value to tasks at hand. For example, you have 2 tasks that take the same amount of time to complete. However, one task, once completed, will bring in more money to your account than the other one. Which means it’s best to start with the more profitable task. Because not all tasks have clear monetary value, it may be hard at the beginning to determine which is less trivial.
✓ Measurements. It’s important to set yourself a ways to measure task’s importance. It can be monetary value, but also time, importance within project scope, value to others, etc. You must find value in each task and measure its importance against others.
✓ Be diligent. To successfully adopt the principle in all aspects of your life, you must be diligent with it. Once you learn to apply the rule, you must use to fully and don’t, as much as possible, put if too, no matter how alluring the trivial tasks may be.