The 80/20 Principle

Lesson 1. There is no unswerving relation between effort and reward.

The 80/20 aphorism, also known as the Pareto Principle, is named after Vilfredo Pareto. This aphorism opines that 80 percent of outputs out-turn from 20 percent of all inputs in any possible business. Pareto’s observation is relevant to population and wealth. Pareto observed that 20 percent of the Italian population owns 80 percent of its land.

People often tend to believe that nothing great comes easy. What most of the people fail to realize is that all inputs, be it small or large, matter equally. One should be able to get more by doing less and not the other way around.

This is a counterintuitive and valuable principle. We have a tendency to believe that 50 percent of inputs will account for a 50 percent profit. People tend to assume that the relationship between reward and efforts are perfectly proportional. However, this is a fallacious assumption. We should not generalize and instead try to understand the fact that all the customers are not bringing in an equal amount of sales value, all the employees are not putting in the equal amount of effort, and all the segments of the business are not generating equal amounts of profit. Hence, don’t be of the opinion that enormous rewards can only be fostered by gigantic efforts, whether in your professional or personal life. 

Each profit-seeking firm can become much more profitable by providing more outputs with less but evident inputs. 

Lesson 2. Aim for effectiveness over efficiency.

The approach of discerning a being’s best assets and utilizing them effectively for maximum efficiency should be considered the paramount of one’s job. When you are doing less, you have to skyrocket your prowess, where you can excel and stand out, in order to achieve more success.

As the 80/20 axiom asserts, 80 percent of your success comes from 20 percent of your efforts, that is, time, strategy, and all the brain-storming works. You have to realize that succeeding in limitation is not the goal. Distinguish where 80 percent of success is pledged by 20 percent of efforts. 

The colossal, profit-seeking industries are the new model in US business. The book also states that the employer is more important than the job itself.  The book suggests considering whether your efforts are flourishing others or yourself.  It speaks in favour of being self-employed in a very early stage of the career but not to peak too soon. Learning from the very best personalities in the business domain will inject qualities of leadership, individuality and originality in