Are you a business owner or an entrepreneur looking to make time for international travel? This blog post is written for you!
How to actually use the 80/20 rule to your advantage
The 80/20 rule is very well-known: 80% of your results are caused by 20% of your efforts, so you should focus on your 20%. This sounds pretty good, but how exactly should we execute this idea?
First of all, please allow me to explain what 80/20 rule really is. Success is much more important than your busyness. If you are an ambitious entrepreneur who loves the actual experience of being in action, chances are you’ve already wasted lots of time doing things that haven’t produced the results you deserve. Or perhaps you have gotten caught up in the wonderful excitement of organising events that don’t really add to your bottom line, of networking with people who aren’t high-quality customers/clients/business partners, and carrying out plans that don’t put real money in the bank. In this case, the 80/20 rule will change the way you operate – you don’t have to be perfect in every way so as to have a profitable business. (Isn’t this liberating?) If you really want to achieve more without getting burnt out, the most important action you need to take now is to clarify what the 20% of your efforts is that gives you 80% of your results. More exactly, 20% of your marketing efforts bring in 80% of the new business you get. 20% of your tasks lead to 80% of your business success – you might measure your business success in dollars, new customers, business growth and other numbers. Apparently, if you can find out the 20% of your tasks that produce 80% of your results, you can free up time, energy and resources to be much more productive and effective! That being said, simply knowing the 80/20 rule wouldn’t make a difference. It’s what you do with it that matters.
Next, I’m going to show you exactly how to identify the 20% of your tasks which are high-leverage activities in your business.
- On the left-hand side of a piece of paper, please write down all tasks that you do in your business, e.g., talking to clients on the telephone, writing marketing emails, and so forth.
- On the right-hand side of this piece of paper, write down all your big wins in your business, e.g., getting a book deal, landing a VIP client, and so on.
- Draw a line to link each task on the left with every big win on the right.
Now you can easily see which tasks resulted in your big wins. These tasks are the 20% of your efforts that you have to focus on. By the way, maybe the rule is the 75/25 rule or the 89/11 rule in your business. But I’m sure now you’ve got the gist. Don’t forget that the 80/20 rule applies to many specific areas in your business as well: 20% of your revenue streams bring in 80% of your actual income. 20% of your clients/customers bring in 80% of your revenue. 20% of your clients/customers bring you 80% of your headaches! Indeed, if you spend your precious time more wisely, you will certainly have more time to spend on important things, e.g., quality time with family and friends, self-care, etc. My question for you: Which tasks are you going to get rid of because you know they don’t bring you results?
Delegate and done
If you only use the time management method in the first section of this guide, you might feel overwhelmed as you have too many things to do each day. That’s why you would be well-advised to incorporate the tactic below and delegate tasks strategically. Now let’s analyze all tasks in your business by filling in the table below: Which tasks in your business are challenging/comfortable/energizing/depleting?
| challenging and energising | challenging and depleting |
| comfortable and energising | comfortable and depleting |
Here is an example (Dorothy’s analysis table):
challenging and energising
|
challenging and depleting
|
comfortable and energising
|
comfortable and depleting
|
In actuality, everything on the right-hand side of this table needs to be delegated. That is to say, any activity that is depleting should be delegated to somebody else, for something that you dislike doing can be another person’s favorite task at work. Also, chances are you don’t like what you are not good at, so why don’t you find somebody who is good at those tasks and delegate all of those to them?
After mastering these highly effective time management strategies, you will surely achieve much more and have enough time for international travel. Congratulations.
