Managing time wisely using Pareto Principle or 80/20 Rule.

Managing time wisely means to be aware that only 20 percent of your day work produce about 80 percent of desired results. We need to improve our efficiency.

Managing time wisely is a modern application of an old principle named after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto.

He created a mathematical formula (1906) to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth.

Many others observed similar phenomena in their own areas of expertise. Quality Management pioneer, Dr. Joseph Juran, working in the US in the 1930s and 40s recognized a universal principle he called the "vital few and trivial many".

"20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results," became known as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 Rule.

What does the 80/20 Rule mean?

• In Pareto's case it meant 20 percent of the people owned 80 percent of the wealth.
• In Juran's initial work he identified 20 percent of the defects causing 80 percent of the problems.
• Project Managers know that 20 percent of the work (the first 10 percent and the last 10 percent) consume 80 percent of time and resources.
• Vendors and retailers assume that 20% of the customers generate 80% of the sales, or that 80% of merchandise comes from 20% of the vendors.
• About 80 percent of the traffic hits only 20 percent of the website pages.
• You can apply the 80/20 Rule to almost anything, from the science of management to the physical world.

What is the practical value for us?

1. Identify and focus on those 20 percent things.
2. When the fire drills of the day begin to sap your time, remind yourself of the 20 percent you need to focus on.

3. If something in the schedule has to slip, if something isn't going to get done, make sure it's not part of that 20 percent.

Pareto's Principle, the 80/20 Rule, should serve as a daily reminder to focus 80 percent of your time and energy on the 20 percent of you work that is really important.

Don't just "work smart",
work smart on the right things.

Analyzing the traffic, the conclusion was, most traffic flowed through three pages:

1. the home page,

2. the samples page,

3. then the contact page.

So they spent time rewriting those pages and changing the samples page from a bunch of thumbnails to a couple of before-and-after pictures.

Bottom line: These optimizations generate four times more leads and closing more business with a third less traffic.

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