The 80:20 Rule

What is it? The 80 20 rule states that 20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results.

In 1906 an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto was walking in his garden. He noticed that every year, 20% of his pea plants in the garden produced approximately 80% of the peas.

This led him to thinking about economic output on a larger scale. After further exploration, he began to find that in various industries, societies and even companies, 80% of the total production more often than not, came from the 20% most productive portion.

This imbalance of inputs and outputs is what has become known as ‘the Pareto principle’. And most commonly referred to as the 80/20 Rule.

How can it help you? It can be used as a simple, easy to use, go to guide that can be applied to so many of the various facets of life. Want to make changes to your life? Change how you’re living? Time for you to fully enjoy your life, but you don’t know where or how to start? ….. Well the 80/20 might just be the thing that you’ve been looking for. It can help you to make easy, achievable ‘bite size’ steps in the direction of your pursuits and goals. From work to leisure, weight loss to free time, even relationships. Here’s just a selection of the areas in your life that it can help you with:

Diet - You can use the 80/20 rule as a guide for your everyday diet—eat nutritious foods 80 percent of the time and have a serving of your favorite treat with the other 20 percent.

Weight loss - The 80/20 principle for weight loss refers to the idea that 80% of your weight loss comes from diet and 20% from exercise, a concept that's a bit more sustainable than a lot of the crash diets that often promote strict eating rules and unrealistic calorie cutting.

Relationships - The theory states that you can only get about 80% of your wants and needs from healthy relationships with others, while the remaining 20% you need to provide for yourself. Sound like the perfect opportunity to start doing some of those things you’ve been daydreaming about, for yourself?

Home environment - It’s highly likely that 80% of what you own brings you a small amount of your pleasure or happiness. An easy and obvious place to start 80/20’ing your environment is with all of that extra stuff laying around in your home that you either don’t use, no longer like or want.

Free time - Think about what you do with your time. For many, hobbies (such as social media, television shows and video games) accounted for 80% of our free time, yet only brings us a 20% feeling of fulfilment.

Work time - Another thing to consider when choosing how to spend your time is clearing away any time zapping distractions. Instead, why not choose to set yourself up so that you can be more productive. It’s a great way to step in the right direction of success, achieving whatever you'd like to in your day, rather than distractions eating away at time. And its a start to getting 80% of the day’s work done in 20% of the time.

Movement, Exercise & Training - if you exercise and move to 80% of your effort, you can recover much better and faster than if you keep on going. Therefore, you can workout & exercise the next day again if you want to. Leaving 20% in the tank ensures that you stay injury-free and you’re able to enjoy other activities.  

Money - You probably work hard to earn your salary, but what does that hard earned money get spent on? 80% of what most people spend their money on isn’t useful or healthy for their lifestyle. This one’s worth reading again.

Work - what are the tasks that you spend 80% of the time doing that only bring in 20% of your returns (i.e., checking your email over and over, writing memos, taking a long time to make basic and unimportant decisions, etc.) How could you choose to change this statistic? Moving it in your favour and away from being unproductive and feeling ‘time poor’?

I’m not suggesting that the 80/20 rule should be adopted as a rigid dictum to live by. Nor that everything fits into this rule. But I do think that it’s worth using as an additional tool. A lens to look ‘all’ of the many and varied facets that make up your life. It could help you to identify, and see how and where you’re spending your time, energy and income.

YOU - and the 80/20 rule. What changes could you make in your life today based on the 80/20 Principle?

Do this today - Sit down and think about what changes could you make in your life to tip the needle in the direction of ‘yes please & I’d like more of that’ and see if you can identify ways to move away from “Oh no. Not more of this again! This doese’t make me feel good”. Try writing out your answers onto paper. This exercise can make things feel ‘more real’. Then put the list up somewhere really obvious. That way you’ll see it frequently, serving you as a gentle reminder. You might be surprised with the changes you identify and the realisation’s that come to you.

Choosing to take action today by supporting ourselves to make healthier lifestyle choices, like incorporating the 80:20 rule into our day-to-day, helps towards building and creating a better and happier version of ourselves longer term.


If you’d like to learn more about using the 80/20 rule and how it can positively affect your health, or need support with your Health & Wellbeing journey. Please use my contact form to get in touch.

Professionally trained and qualified to support people with their Life’s journey.

Helping you achieve success and fulfilment in all areas of your life. Best wishes always - Julie

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