An Italian engineer turned economist made a famous observation in the early 20th century. He had extensively studied the distribution of wealth in his home country. He came to the conclusion that 80% of his country’s wealth belonged to 20% of the population in 1906. His name was Vilfredo Pareto. This principle was later named after him, as it started to find universal applications. It is also commonly known as the 80 – 20 rule, which can be very easily understood and applied. Business sectors right from mining to manufacturing are using this principle to optimize the usage of resources.
Our human mind and intellect combination is always kept busy with continuous data streaming from 3 categories:
- Ideas
- Events
- People
American researcher, Nicholas Butler came up with an interesting saying in the year 1931. It goes like this: “There are the few who make things happen, the many more who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens”. According to this saying, people can be classified under 3 levels:
Level 1: Achievers – People who make things happen. They have a flexible approach to learning from every experience they encounter. They are always in the midst of ideas and surround themselves with similar people.
Level 2: Onlookers – People who watch things happen. They are experts in cramming knowledge about events and its intricate details.
Level 3: Gossipers – People who may be blissfully ignorant of what is happening. They tend to spend most of their time in discussing about people, which is hardly beneficial to anyone.
Our available time of 24 hours is distributed among the three levels, according to one’s own choices. The valuable currency of time remains the same for all. It is one such currency, which can never get devalued. To start with, it may be a good idea to self-assess on how much we tend to spend on each level, every day. This will become a starting point for future improvements.
The key element in accomplishing the required goals in lesser time is to prioritize the tasks. Pareto principle is one such prioritization tool which can help us to reach and stay in Level 1 consistently!
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