If you want more for less, in whatever you do, it would help if you were familiar with the Pareto Principle.

The Pareto Principle is simply that 80% of your results can come from just 20% of your efforts. For example; If you think about exercise, you can be much fitter and healthier if you exercise vigorously for 30 minutes a day for 5 days a week, regardless of what you eat. That’s just 2.5 hours out of 168 hours in a week for great results. (Obviously, you’d get better results if you ate healthy, organic veggies, fruits, legumes, and lean meats, but whatever) Even if you’re sitting on the couch for the rest of the week, that little investment will pay you back. in great results.

Another example is crowding before an exam. A better option might be 10 minutes to review each lesson each week as you learn it! Or if you are in business and look at how much money you are making from each customer, you will notice that around 20% or less of your customers contribute 80% of your income.

So how can we use this information to get the maximum results at the best time? Think about your own life and where you get the most results. You might notice that the common denominator in those areas is that it generally only took a small amount of concentrated time / effort to get those results. Also think about those non-tangible results, like happiness, love, connection, learning. What activities do you best in those areas?

You are losing your time?

The reverse is also true, that 80% of your efforts lead to only 20% of your results, this is what I call “faffing”. Many of the activities that consume our time do not actually produce good results or make us happy.

The key to getting the most results is noticing which activities are giving you the best results and spending more time doing those things ignoring, delegating, or eliminating the other 80% of the activities that don’t work.

A simple question you could ask yourself is:

• What results do I get from doing this?
• Are the results worth the time I put into it?
• What activities give me the best performance / highest results?

Start paying more attention to the results you get from the time you spend, spend more time on high-performance activities, and forget about the rest.