Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
— Goethe
The 80/20 principle states 20 percent of your actions are responsible for 80 percent of the positive results in your life. Likewise, the other 80 percent of your actions are responsible for the remaining 20 percent of the positive results in your life.
This means that 80 percent of our activities are not very valuable while 20 percent of our activities are extremely valuable.
As we identify and focus on the most valuable 20 percent of our activities, we can see dramatically better outcomes in our lives without a dramatic increase in time and effort. This requires that we make better choices in how we spend our time and energy.
In order to do gain this benefit, we need to determine which of our activities are part of the 20 percent of activities that produce the most valuable results. Then, we need to choose to do more of those valuable activities and less of the remaining activities.
This can be challenging because many of the less valuable activities are the seemingly urgent items that so easily fill our days. They are cleaning the house, scrolling on social media, paying bills, doing laundry, running errands and many other distractions that fill our days. It takes a lot of intention and focus to ensure that these tasks do not rob us of the time we need to ensure that the important 20 percent of activities are getting done.
As we put the important activities ahead of the endless stream of unimportant activities we can see great miracles in our lives. We can achieve more than we ever thought possible.
What are the 20 percent of your activities that bring the most value into your life? What activities distract you from these activities? How can you make sure that 20 percent gets the attention they need?