Richard Koch's 80/20 Principle says 20% of your activities generate 80% of your results. Nick Hutchison argues busyness is hidden laziness, and you should find the one high-impact task that makes everything else simpler, then stop doing the rest.
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Hello, Book Thinkers family! Do you specialize in unimportant things? I know that I did for a very long time. Today's book tip is going to come from The 80/20 Principle. The subtitle of this book is The Secret to Achieving More with Less. We've all heard of the 80/20 principle. It's called a lot of different things: The Power of Distribution, it's called Pareto's Principle. I'm sure there are a lot of other names. And I was recently watching a video where Tim Ferriss talked about this book. He's actually quoted as a testimonial up here. It says, quote, the 80/20 principle is the cornerstone of results-based living. Read this book and use it. Timothy Ferriss, my idol. And that question, do you specialize in unimportant things, is a question that we need to think about because our culture reinforces being busy, being busy for the sake of being busy. But That's a form of laziness because if you're not doing highly efficient things, the 20% of your activity that leads to 80% of the results, then you're not taking the time to plan out your schedule and therefore you are exercising a form of laziness that is hard to understand. It's sort of counterintuitive, but it makes complete sense when you reflect on it. If all of your time is focused on inefficient tasks, the 80% of your activity that only produces 20% of the results, then you're not busy. You're not efficient. You are promoting a form of laziness that, like I said, our culture reinforces. They say, don't stand still, run, be busy, work a million hours a day. And I've fallen into that trap plenty of, plenty of, plenty of times. I am always busy, and nowadays I'm busy with more high-impact activity and less low-impact activity, but I still get caught in the pointless emails, or maybe some of my clients or people in the community who spend a bigger portion of my time but don't end up buying anything. They're just out there trying to— they're like internet arguers. They're just out there trying to troll on people and talk. And so I spend my time trying to communicate with those people, but that's not efficient activity. Those aren't my true fans. And so this book is a great way to reframe your activity in a million different ways. The One Thing by Gary Keller talks a lot about what is the one domino that you can chop down today that will make the rest of your life easier. And so with the 80/20 principle, what 20% of activity will produce 80% of the results or make the road ahead 80% easier for you? And so those are questions that I like to think about. Don't be productive for the sake of being productive. That is a form of laziness. What a fun statement. And that's today's book tip. Bye.
