Brian Gubernick breaks down what to do with the 80% of tasks that only generate 20% of results. Three options: say no and accept the mess, delegate or hire it out, or build one-time solutions like FAQs and recorded videos to handle recurring low-value work.
Chapters
Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to talk about Pareto's principle, the 80/20 principle, which many of you know all too well. But I want to focus our energy not on the 20% But I want to talk around the 80%. What do we do with the 80% that I'm going to ask you to stop paying as much attention to? So first, let's start by talking around Pareto's principle. I don't want to assume everybody knows. So let's start there. In summary, what Pareto's principle stands for, what it discusses, is that 20% of the activities that you do on a daily basis yield roughly 80% of the results. So when you hear it, 20/80, 80/20, 20% of the activities you do yield 80% of the results. The inverse, 80% of the activities you're doing are yielding 20% of the results. Okay? So let's look at business or health or relationships. What you'll find when you break down a process or a system, whatever you're doing, is that only a portion of that system, only a portion of that process is generating the vast majority of the output of the, of the result. So if you're in a sales business, what you'll find is that success of that sales business is, is more so dependent on the creation of new business, lead generation, the 20%, than on any other variable within the sales process. So you could be, you know, an amazing service provider. You can give top-level service. You can have all of the, all of the tools and, and service all of the requirements of the client. But if you don't have any clients to work with, nothing matters. So the 20% in this particular case is creation of business. And that is the 80% of results, or the 20% of activity going into that. So the question then becomes, if I'm spending 20% of my activity generating 80% of my result, and I'm now committed to then doubling or tripling or quadrupling down on my 20%, What then happens with the 80%? All of the things, Brian, that you're asking me to neglect. What do I do about my 80%? Well, I want to talk around that because I think that, you know, we all conceptually understand Pareto's principle. And I think many of us live it or have at least attempted to live it from time to time. But oftentimes we get jammed up By the 80%, because we say no to it, but we can only do it temporarily. It's not sustainable. Well, at least until today. So I want to share with you a few things that I think you've got to consider in terms of managing your 80%, if you are truly focused on the 20% generating most of the result. So if you got a task list of 10 things, 2 of them generate the result, what do you do about the other 8 things? Here's what I think you do. Again, using this example of 10 where 2 are the things you want to double down on and 8 remain. First thing you can do, just say no and learn to deal with it. Just say no and learn to deal with the 8 falling by the wayside. Here's the reality. If you're on a mission to build a big business, a big life, and you understand that in order to do so, you got to double or triple down on those things that matter most, then you are going to have chaos. You're going to create chaos due to oftentimes the neglect of those things that do not matter as much as your 20%. So you got to learn to say no, and you've got to learn to deal with it. You got to learn to deal with the chaos. You have to allow for it. An example for me, I am not great in responding to emails. I used to be fantastic. I used to lay awake at night thinking about all the emails I hadn't responded to, get up in the middle of the night and actually respond to them. And I had to learn that a lot of the things I'm receiving and a lot of the things I'm replying to fall in my 80% and they're not that important. And so as a result, I have a lot of emails that slip through the cracks. Most importantly for me though, is that those that slip through the cracks, no disrespect to anybody that sent me an email that hasn't received a response yet, but I can't let the 20%, the most important emails slide by. So I receive, you know, probably 100 emails a day, 10 or 20 of them matter most. And I spend my time there and I'll get to maybe one day the other 80%, but I have to allow for the chaos. I had to accept it. Now, for many of you, you may not be comfortable with that, which leads me to number 2. Another way to handle the 80%— let the 80% create a job description for you. Not for a job, not a job for you to have, but potentially a new job to hire for. So if you go back to my example of 10 tasks, of which you're going to manage the 2 that are most important, and you have 8 other tasks Those 8 other tasks create a job description for someone you need to hire. Now, if you're thinking, man, I don't have the money to make a hire for those 8, I would challenge you on that. Because if you truly have identified the 2 most important things on this list and you're able to double or triple down on them, the output should be substantially greater, thereby increasing your revenue. And your ability to pay somebody to handle the other 8. So I would actually hire, and then I would hold that person accountable on a, at a very high level to getting rid of those 8 things and freeing up my time to go work on the 20%. You could, you could create a job description and hire for it, or maybe you could take these 8 things and assign it to someone who's already on your payroll or in your world. Who may be underutilized right now. These are things that can be passed off. Another thing that I'm thinking around in terms of my 80%, one thing that I did a while back and I continue to do today in order to handle that 80%, I create what I consider one-time solutions for the 80%, and I leverage those one-time solutions repeatedly. So I'll give you an example. A lot of those things on that list of 10, 2 things I'm keeping, 8 things need to get off my calendar. A lot of those 8 things could be handled by, say, an FAQ document or a recorded video, or, you know, some other method to answer a repeated task or repeated question one time, and you just continually point to it. This is why help desks are created within big businesses. Again, this is why FAQs exist. This is why training and videos happen. This is why there is a, a, you know, monthly meeting of sorts that you can drive to as the one-time solution versus handling it and putting out fires every single day. So in terms of handling your 80%, Learn to say no, learn to deal with it and accept the chaos. Take the 80%, let it create a job description that you either hire for, or you assign these tasks to somebody already in your world who may be underutilized at this moment, or you create solutions, one-time solutions, and leverage the heck out of them like FAQs or help desk or whatever it may be. And you solve at least for a portion of the 80%. At the end of the day, if you're truly committed to building a very big business, a very big world, you've got to go all in on those things that matter most. And you've got to ignore, neglect, or offload those things that matter less. You've got to be committed to it though. You've got to have your head right. And you got to be real. Like, are you really ready to make this commitment? I'd like to think that, that our listeners, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably the type of person that needs to make this commitment. That's all we have for today. The No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]
