Me and 80/20… So Happy Together

February 14, 2012
Sedona, Arizona

I went through some of Richard Koch’s 80/20 books over the weekend and had my eyes opened a bit.

If you haven’t read the book, the basic premise is that a large percentage of your results come from an unproportionally small amount of your efforts.

You can apply that basic principle to many areas of your business and your life.

I get the 80/20 thing and I found it very valuable.

As it turns out though, that wasn’t the biggest takeaway I got. The biggest idea I realized is that I’ve been working too hard.

In an effort to reach my goals, I made the mistake of looking around at what other successful people were doing and began doing that.

In other words, I started working like a dog.

But the 80/20 materials reminded me that there’s a difference between being successful and being smart and successful.

Many successful people work like dogs. They’re always rushing to the next thing and they always have some place to be or something to do.

The most successful people, however, have discovered how to achieve great things without working 24/7.

My big taeaway from the book was the realization that you don’t achieve more by doing more.

You have to step back and be smarter than that. You have to figure out a creative and effective way to do more with less.

And that’s where the core principle of the 80/20 rule comes into play.

Because to do more with less you have to find those things in your life and business where a small amount of effort creates an unproportionally large amount of results.

Once you find those things, you do more of them.

So what’s “my thing?”

Well, at this point in my life, it’s writing copy, or just writing in general. That’s writing for me or for others.

I thought back over my service revenue from the last month or so and I realized that the vast majority of it was created by relatively few hours of effort.

Now that I know that, the responsibility is mine to do something about it.

I could spend my days checking email, messing around on Facebook® talking on the phone, putting a website together or chatting it up with friends. But I’m choosing not to do those things.

Instead, I’m trading in stuff like the whole email checking routine first thing in the morning for this, writing.

Writing is my point of leverage that gives me an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

Writing is what allows me to accomplish big results with very little effort.

And being successful without killing myself “working” (on unimportant things) seems like a smart way to go, don’t you think?

What’s your thing and what are you doing about it?

See you next time,

Jason Leister
Editor, The Client Letter
Creating Success for Independent Professionals
ClientsSuck.net