I want to share my top 3 tools and theories that you can use to keep you focused and continue to take action.
1. Pareto Principle AKA the 80/20 rule
Called so after the founder, Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who first wrote about it in 1895. Pareto noticed that people in his society seemed to divide naturally into what he called the “vital few”, the top 20% in terms of money & influence, and the “trivial many” the bottom 80%.
His rule says that
20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results
20% of your customers will account for 80% of your sales
20% of your products or services will account for 80% of your profits
20% of your tasks will account for 80% of the value of what you do & so on
This means that if you have a list of 10 items, 2 of those items will turn out to be worth as much or more than the other 8 items.
Can you guess which items the average person is most likely to procrastinate on?
The vital few, instead busying themselves with the least important 80%, the trivial many. So look at your list of 10 & be brave to eat the frog, the biggest & ugliest one first so that you get an 80% return on time, money & investment by focusing on the 20%
2. Plan every day in advance
Alex Mackenzie wrote “Action without planning is the cause of every failure”. The better you plan, the easier it is to overcome procrastination, to get started, to eat your frog and then to keep going. Every minute spent planning saves as many as 10 minutes in execution.
“Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance”.
Plan every day, week and month in advance.
Take a notepad and make a list of everything you have to do in the next 24 hours.
Add to your list as new items come up.
Make a list of all your projects, the big multi-task jobs that are important to your future.
Lay out each of your major goals, projects or tasks by priority, what is most important, and by sequence. Start with the end in mind and work backwards.
Think on paper! Always work from a list, you’ll be amazed at how much more productive you become. You can even highlight when you have completed tasks in different coloured pens or have a done list.
Colour code your diary so you can see at a glance what tasks you are planning in & consider where do they fit in the 80/20 rule.
3. Eisenhower Matrix
This is a Time Management Quadrant that splits tasks into the following:
URGENT & IMPORTANT – DO
IMPORTANT & NOT URGENT – PLAN
URGENT & NOT IMPORTANT – DELEGATE
NOT URGENT & NOT IMPORTANT – DITCH
Use this as part of your daily, weekly, and monthly planning and consider which is the ideal box you need to be operating in. Acknowledge that we will flit in & out of the boxes.
Where would your 20% sit?
Where do the 80% sit and what can you do about that?