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Time Management
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The Pareto Principle offers a powerful tool for change. More
value is derived from the time you spend targeting 20% of your
clients than from the time you spend on the other 80%. Your
telephone’s speed-dial list should probably be updated to
account for the 20% of people you actually call regularly. Those
who read your reports will probably derive 80% of the value you
put in them from 20% of the information.
Remember when your parents had days when they received
no mail? Remember when people had only three or four TV chan-
nels? (If you’re too young to remember this and can’t believe it,
ask your parents or grandparents.) Those were the days when the
Pareto Principle touched only a few people’s lives and in only lim-
ited ways. But now? Consider the following statistics:
• Americans receive 15 billion faxes yearly; that figure is
expected to double every two to three years.
• 50,000 books are published yearly in the United States.
• The American reading public has about 11,000 maga-
zines to choose from.
• The average cable television system carries over 100
channels and emerging technology could expand that to
well over 500 choices.
• You’ll probably spend eight months out of your life going
through the mail.

It has become impossible to keep abreast of the stream of
information that washes past us. To stay ahead, people must
become selective. They must concentrate on that 20% of infor-
mation that yields 80% of the value and reject the rest.
This principle can be so broadly applied that the examples
are virtually unlimited. Keeping in mind that 80% of your value
to your company almost certainly derives from 20% of your
work product (and from 20% of the time you spend at work),
you might consider searching for ways to improve that ratio.
Real productivity—and the advancement that very often accom-
panies it—may well be a function of discovering how to make
the most of the Pareto Principle.