A systematic approach to time management success using Pareto Principle

You are only as successful as your time management skills. The first step in your journey to success and happiness is to have a powerful set of time management skills. If you still haven’t heard about “Pareto Principle”, it’s one of the most important principles that relates to time management. Pareto Principle in relation to time management and productivity states that only “20% of your activity is responsible for attaining 80% of the overall results”. Let’s have an easy example. Supposing in your to-do list you usually have 30 tasks to do in a day. 20% of these 30 tasks are only 20% x 30= 6 tasks.

It implies that only 6 of the 30 tasks will be responsible for contributing 80% completion of your goals. The other tasks (24 of them may only contribute 20%). It further implies that you only to need to determine what are these tasks in your daily routine and then once you identify it, you should give your 100% attention in completing these 6 “high-valued tasks”.

What are the benefits of identifying these “high valued” tasks?

First, it removes the “pressure” you normally encounter in your daily work routine. Aside from putting your 100% work effort on completing the entire 30 tasks, you only to focus and complete 6 of them; while you attain 80% project/goal completion.

Second, it increases the “quality” of your high-valued tasks because you devote a lot of your time doing it. Before you might only give an hour of that “high-valued” activity because of the lack of priority and importance. Now you might be giving 3 to 6 hours of your time for that task. The result is high quality. And high-quality output results to better work performance and higher customer satisfaction if you are working in the business/manufacturing sector.

Third, it “saves” a lot of time by not doing “unimportant” work. A lot of activities you normally do in the day do not contribute significantly to achieving your long term goals. For example, if you normally have 30 tasks, 24 of these task does not contribute highly in attaining your work objective. You will be wasting a lot of your time by doing this. Since time is gold, you must concentrate your effort on doing the most important and highly valued task in your daily routine which will have a high impact in your project/goal completion.

How do I know if these are the “high-valued” tasks according to Pareto Principle?

You will not be successful if you do not plan. You cannot plan if you do not have goals. And lastly, you cannot formulate a set of tasks if you do not have a plan and a goal. These long-term goals should be the basis for your daily tasks.

You will know if these are “high-valued” task if it contributes directly in attaining your long term goals. Supposing you are a running athlete, your long term/yearly goal is to complete a 42K marathon less than 3 hours. Of course, if you largely devote a lot of your time doing shopping, watching television, working on some other hobbies; then these activities are not considered as “high-valued” because it does not help directly in attaining your goal.

Instead, why not concentrate on your daily running routine than doing other tasks? Your daily running workout is a “high-valued” task that can help you attain your long term goals. You only need to focus on the few important things that matter in life. This is how Pareto principle can be applied to time management. The rest (those that are not important); can be delegated or assigned to another person.

Guest Author Jeanine Maningo

About the Author:

Jeanine Maningo is a singer/songwriter. She also blogs about success and happiness which you can read at her blog: life-love-success-happiness.blogspot.com/

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• Holistic Time Management
• Learn to say “no” (and save time!)

How do you manage the time you have available during the day?