The National Science Fair

The Rule 8020 Or Pareto Principle

In this article I will talk about the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule. According to this 19th century Italian Economist, 20% of the causes cause 80% of the results, and vice versa. This can be applied to the distribution of resources, benefits, customers, product sales, time is a contra-intuitiva rule, because normally we hope there will be an equal proportion between causes and results. Not always met, it should be in addition a clear relation between causes and results, between the input data and output data. In addition, sometimes the proportion varies a 70/30, 90/10 or even 95/5. It does not apply to everything, but it is useful as a model to learn how to focus on the basics and eliminate the superfluous. As we use this rule to help our time management? Then, concentrating on the most valuable 20%.

For that we must first analyse different aspects of our life and identify what causes provoke what results, asking us questions like: what 20% of tasks and activities that do I do result in 80% of my results and my happiness? What 20% of the cases are causing 80% of my problems and my unhappiness? What or who causes me stress disproportionate to the time I spend? Once we have the answer to all these responses, preferably in writing, we must select and eliminate ineffective, causing the worst results. If us seems too drastic to delete 80% less effective, we can focus at the moment in the less effective 20% of the total. Either using the principle of 50/5 (similar to the Pareto principle) which says that 50% of the resources or causes cause only 5% of the results, we can find this 50% and focus our efforts on eliminating it. So at least we would be focusing on rid of less efficient. Although it is better and easier to just focus on the 20% better and enhance it.

In theory with this principle could be between 300% and 400% increase productivity, if we quintuplicamos 20% more productive that causes the 80% of the results. However, probably not so because as we promote this more productive minimum, results are diluting. As I said before not always applied rule or principle is, but it is simply a useful model to take into account and apply it when we see that there may be a situation of this kind.