I first came across the 80/20 principle, without nearly realizing what it was, when I stumbled into a poster designed by Russian artist El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (“Клином красным бей белых!”). A red wedge - a finite portion of the visual - launched against a white circle.

There was drama, action, something big was happening in that poster. I tried to cover the red thing with my hand. No story anymore. Just some black and white. A single element in the painting produced most of its effect.

I forgot about that until 10 years years later. I was in one of my first sales jobs. I had zero experience. The area sales manager who hired me had to write down on a napkin the 10 unique selling points to use during the pitch with the prospects. After a few weeks, I realized that most results were triggered by only a couple of points. I was lazy: I started using only those two, over and over again. I did quite some practice, which in turn led to some decent results.

So what’s the 80/20 principle?

80% of what you get comes from the 20% of what you do.

Or, in other words (those from Wikipedia): in many outcomes roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes.

Apply that to any field but don’t be too fastidious around the 80/20 split: sometimes it’s 70/30, 90/10 or even 95/5.

The principle is called “Pareto’s rule” after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who, in 1906, noted that 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of the people. He then went on observing that 80% of the peas in his garden came from 20% of his pea plants.

Not that anybody could care less about the peas, but today the principle is a big buzzword, especially in business: 80% of sales come from 20% of the clients, 80% of revenue from 20% of the products, 80% of the work is done by 20% of the team, and so on. The challenge is how to identify what the 20% is for any situation. I’ve tried to do just that for years, and often ended up arguing and fighting with lots of people at work because my intent was to stop whatever they were doing I believed was wasteful. What an arrogant bastard I was. Please forgive me if I ever insulted you. When trying to persuade others to follow your criteria, the principle stops working because of course nobody will listen. Unless you’re in charge of a team and then it becomes THE way to go: figure out the activities to do every day in order to achieve the top results, distribute them across the team or, better, let the team pick them up, then let go of everything else BUT make sure to focus on that crucial 20% (or 30%, or 10%).

Your team will be grateful, you’ll be grateful to them for the results.

Once you get acquainted with the general idea, it should be easy for you to spot the correlation between cause and effect in anything you do. In fact, the most interesting part for me was when after using it in business for quite a few years, I came to the sudden realization that I had been using the 80/20 rule also in my private life. I hardly do whatever it’s not important. I let go of stuff. I don’t fret about most things - (I think) I never feel stressed.

“If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content,” said or, more likely, wrote Leo Tolstoy. I couldn’t agree more. Nothing is perfect. Nothing can be perfect because even if it was, it would start to rotten right afterwards.

So start today by finding correlations between inputs and outputs. What gives you the most for the least? Where is the juice most worth the squeeze? Try and always think about how can you get more with less. There’s almost always a solution that will give great results with less effort. Once you find that, make sure to execute it as soon as possible, then just relax, do whatever you enjoy the most, or do nothing. And remember, nothing is perfect.