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Productivity Booster: Create An 80/20 List

January 22, 2009 on 5:56 pm | In Life, Productivity | 7 Comments

Welcome back! Good to see you. If you haven't seen it, here's the archive of my best writing. Thanks for visiting!

Last week I stopped myself from just aimlessly doing stuff and decided to refocus on the 20% of activities that generate 80% of the results for myself and my clients. Here’s my 80/20 List:

My Critical 20 Percent List

Installing good Productivity habits [see this post] yield rapid results, but it’s easy to backslide. Staying focused on The Critical 20% is the surest path to reaching your outcomes faster and with less effort.

Despite the fact that I “know” I should be focusing on this stuff, it’s so easy to chug along just taking care of the “Urgent” without addressing Important items like systems creation, while keeping a nice balance between sales (getting the work) and production (doing the work).

[Tim Ferris has recently written about habit acquisition techniques based on Leo Babauta's Zen Habits methodology - worth a read.]

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Your critical 20% is something I haven’t wagered on. I must say I’m guilty of focusing on things listed in the trivial 80%. I’ll try to do it your way and see what happens.

Comment by Reese — January 22, 2009 #
Hey Will,

I found your blog by randomly surfing. I really like the content and will definitely add it to my bookmarks.

I enjoy reading Zen Habits and am really interesting in getting Leo’s book about simplicity. We all can take some pointers from these productivity masters.

Comment by types of engagement rings — January 23, 2009 #
Everytime I visit your Blog, I feel inspired and go away with immediate actionables. Cannot appreciate your work enough!

Comment by Anup Batra — January 24, 2009 #
I agree with you about the importance of 80/20. Checking emails and attending unstructured meetings would also be in my list of things that were unproductive. I’ve read Tim Ferris’s 4-hour workweek. He has a great way for creating sysytems to concentrate on the most important things to achieve his goal.

Comment by Design — January 27, 2009 #
But chasing payment will give you the reward of your work, otherwise you will come to a standstill. If your customers and clients are good then you can count this activity as 80% otherwise I would have to call it in 20%.

Comment by springs — February 10, 2009 #
@Springs — you make a very good point that getting paid is what it is all about. However, the point I was making is that invoicing and chasing cash is not in MY critical 20%. I do have an admin person who is responsible for that, and handling the billing side is certainly in her 20%.

Comment by Will — February 13, 2009 #
The 80/20 is excellent. I first learned of this principle from reading a great book from Brian Tracy. It is so easy to get tied up on non dollar productive activities.

Comment by Michael — July 11, 2009 #