Apply The 80/20 Rule To Everything In Time And Life Management

Before you begin work, always ask yourself, “Is this task in the top 20% of my activities or in the bottom 80%?

The 80/20 Rule is one of the most helpful of all concepts of time and life management. It is also called the Pareto Principle after its founder, the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who first wrote about it in 1895. Pareto noticed that people in his society seemed to divide naturally into what he called the “vital few,” the top 20% in terms of money and influence, and the “trivial many,” the bottom 80%.

The Great Discovery
He later discovered that virtually all economic activity was subject to this Pareto Principle as well.

For example, this rule says that 20% of your activities will account for 80% of your results. 20% of your customers will account for 80% of your sales. 20% of your products or services will account for 80% of your profits. 20% of your tasks will account for 80% of the value of what you do, and so on.

This means that if you have a list of ten items to do, two of those items will turn out to be worth as much or more than the other eight items put together.

The Greatest Payoff
Here is an interesting discovery. Each of these tasks may take the same amount of time to accomplish. But one or two of those tasks will contribute five or ten times the value as any of the others.

Often, one item on a list of ten things that you have to do can be worth more than all the other nine items put together. This task is invariably the one that you should do first.

The Most Valuable Tasks
The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous. For this reason, you must adamantly refuse to work on tasks in the bottom 80% while you still have tasks in the top 20% left to be done.

Before you begin work, always ask yourself, “Is this task in the top 20% of my activities or in the bottom 80%?”

Getting Started
The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place. Once you actually begin work on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally motivated to continue. There is a part of your mind that loves to be busy working on significant tasks that can really make a difference. Your job is to feed this part of your mind continually.

Managing Your Life
Time management is really life management, personal management. It is really taking control over the sequence of events. Time management is control over what you do next. And you are always free to choose the task that you will do next. Your ability to choose between the important and the unimportant is the key determinant of your success in life and work.

Effective, productive people discipline themselves to start on the most important task that is before them. They force themselves to eat that frog, whatever it is. As a result, they accomplish vastly more than the average person and are much happier as a result. This should be your way of working as well.

Action Exercises
Make a list of all the key goals, activities, projects and responsibilities in your life today. Which of them are, or could be, in the top 10% or 20% of tasks that represent, or could represent, 80% or 90% of your results?

Resolve today that you are going to spend more and more of your time working in those few areas that can really make a difference in your life and career, and less and less time on lower value activities.

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5 Great Steps To Building Self-Confidence & Becoming Popular

How would you like to become more popular and welcomed by people in your social or business circles?

Well, you can be, by learning how to be more charming in every interaction with others.

The deepest human need is the desire to feel important. When you go through life building self-confidence and making other people feel important and valuable, they will like you, welcome you, and open every door for you. This is how to become popular both professionally and personally.

If you are in business, becoming a charming person, making others feel important, will help you in every business situation, from negotiating terms to borrowing money to influencing key customers.

If you are in sales, the way customers feel about you, and feel when they are with you, will determine your level of sales and referrals more than any other factor.

In your personal, family and social life, learning to be more charming will make you more popular, desirable, influential and persuasive than any other quality.

How do you become a genuinely charming person? Here are five behaviors you can practice with every person to make him or her feel more important:

1. Smile In Every Interaction

Each person has a deep-down need to be accepted unconditionally by other people, without judgment or criticism.

And how to express this “unconditional positive regard?” Simple! Just smile. An open, honest, happy-to-see-you smile warms people’s hearts, makes them feel important, and causes them unconsciously to like you from the first moment.

2. Say “Thank You” Early And Often

Everyone loves to be appreciated for something, anything they have done for someone else.

When you say the magic words “Thank you” early and often, you make people feel important and happy, raise their self-esteem and increase their desire to help you and do things for you.

3. Give Genuine Compliments

Whenever you admire the possessions, traits or accomplishments of others, they automatically feel more important and valuable! As Abraham Lincoln said, “Everybody likes a compliment.”

Admire people’s choices in clothing, hairstyles, cars, briefcases, purses or office layout. Admire their homes or apartments. Admire their degrees or certificates. Whenever you compliment a person on something he or she has obviously invested time and emotion in achieving, you boost their self-image and build high self-esteem. As a result, they find you to be “charming.”

4. Give Praise And Approval Often

Give praise and approval generously, for both small and large accomplishments. Whenever anyone does anything worthwhile, tell them how good they are, and what a fine job they’ve done, building self-confidence and high self-esteem.

One definition of self-esteem is: How much a person feels praiseworthy.

When you praise your spouse and children, your staff and coworkers, your customers and suppliers, you make them feel more important, and cause them to see you as “charming.”

5. Give Them Your Full Attention

People feel valuable and important to the degree to which they are listened to and respected.

Whenever you listen closely to another person when he is talking, his self-esteem goes up. His brain releases endorphins, nature’s “happy drug,” and he feels good about being in your presence.

You always “pay value” to a person by listening attentively, by hanging on every word. When you do, he or she warms up to you and begins to find you “charming.”

Go through life looking for little opportunities to make people feel valuable and special. Smile at them as if you are glad to see them. Thank them regularly. Compliment them sincerely. Praise them lavishly. And listen to them when they speak building self-confidence and promoting high self-esteem.

Soon, almost without effort on your part, everyone will be talking about “what a charming person you are.”

Thank you for reading this article on how to become popular through unconditional positive regard, building self-confidence and promoting high self-esteem. Please share and comment below!

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