The 80/20 rule can mean that 80% of your results come from 20% of the tasks you do. Or 80% of the sales you make come from 20% of your customers. Knowing this, what are some situations where the 80/20 rule can be applied?
1. Books. Often 80% of the useful information is in 20% of the book. Reading the entire book to find the useful information is time consuming. This is how you search for the sections that interest you or have the information you are looking for. You read those sections and skip the rest. Each section also has some fluff. So you only read the paragraphs that are important. And you skip the rest.
2. Tasks. At work, you may have a to-do list. On your to-do list, let’s say you have 10 items. Two of them are high priority. And the rest can be left for later. Those two high-priority tasks will make the most progress on your project. So you do those two tasks first and wait for the rest for later.
3.Movies. Your time is limited, so you can’t watch many movies. But you like to watch movies. Let’s say there are 10 movies for you to choose from. You can’t watch all 10. So you pick the top 2 movies and skip the rest. Those 2 movies can either be classic or have rave reviews. But they are more likely to give you more pleasure than the other 8 movies combined.
4. Websites. When you search for information on the Internet, you will use a search engine. The search engine returns many results. So instead of reading a lot of the websites, read just a few of them. Those few are likely to contain similar information to the other websites listed.