15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management pdfdrive com

In Their Own Words…
I accept that I cannot do everything so I work only on things that are vitally important using the 80:20
rule.
–James Schramko is the founder of SuperFastBusiness.
The two primary productivity concepts I apply are the following...First, the 80/20 rule, which helps me to
identify which tasks deliver the biggest rewards and thus I should focus on. Two, the “Theory of
Constraints,” which helps me to identify what the immediate constraint is that’s holding me back from a
desirable result.
–Yaro Starak is the author of the blog Profits Blueprint and founder of the Entrepreneurs-Journey.com
blog.
So how can we apply Pareto’s principle to gain more time in our lives?
80/20 Business
In business, you could literally analyze your customer base and decide to “fire”
80 percent of the least profitable customers. I certainly fired many clients who
weren’t worth the trouble back in my day.
You could do the same with your sales force. Apply the 80/20 rule and fire
the majority of your sales representatives who are actually producing the least.

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This will enable you to reward the remaining highly successful reps with more
accounts or larger territories and give you more time to support the “winners” on
your sales team.
You could look at all the products you are currently offering and, using 80/20
analysis, get rid of the majority of your products that provide the least profit.
This could eliminate the majority of customer service issues, free up room in
your warehouse, and simplify your value proposition.
If you’re running a software company, make sure you are identifying which
bugs are causing 80 percent of the phone calls to your help center. Eliminate
these first, and you’ll dramatically reduce your tech support costs.
You can even apply 80/20 to your marketing efforts. I once interviewed Seth
Godin at a conference and asked him why he didn’t use Twitter. This was back
when Twitter was all the rage and, given that Seth is viewed as a marketing
guru, people were shocked he wasn’t engaged with the platform. He said, “I
have nothing against Twitter. There are only so many hours a day and if I spend
time on Twitter, I won’t be spending time on other things, like writing a daily
blog post.”
In this age of social media, so many of us feel like we have to be on Twitter
and Facebook and LinkedIn—my gosh, I even have a Pinterest page! But a
simple 80/20 analysis would reveal that most of your engagement, most of your
audience, probably comes from just one platform. You could let people know
that’s where you’ll be, and then ignore the rest.
80/20 Yardwork
How much time and money do you spend on your yard each year? Maybe your
current practice is to mow the lawn, edge the lawn, apply fertilizer or other
chemicals, weed the flower beds, trim the bushes and trees, plant flowers, and
sweep the sidewalk. If you don’t do it yourself, think how much you spend on
mowing, replacing mulch, buying lawn fertilizer, applying weed killer, or
trimming trees.
The 80/20 rule would suggest that only 20 percent of yard maintenance
activities account for about 80 percent of how your yard actually looks to the
neighbors and others who are driving by your home. With that in mind, you
might decide to mow and weed, but stop edging and planting seasonal flowers.
(Unless yardwork is fun for you, of course!)
80/20 Reading and Studying

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My favorite high school teacher gave me sound advice as I went off to college.
She warned that the reading assignments would be unlike anything I had done
before. A book a week for classes using fiction, and multiple chapters a week
from each textbook.
She taught me that if you just read the first and last paragraph of each chapter
as well as the first sentence of each paragraph in between, you’ll understand 80
percent of the message of the book. I learned that it might not get you straight
A’s, but it can get you solid B’s.
Today, I have three over-scheduled kids in school. As I help my teenage
daughters study for high school tests, I now know to start by looking at the
chapter summaries and chapter self-tests. Knowing what the textbook author
thinks is most important, and then going back and finding the answers to those
questions in the text itself, is much more efficient than reading the entire chapter
from beginning to end.
What’s in the Dalai Lama’s Bag?
My favorite story about the Dalai Lama was from an article in The Globe and
Mail in 2002. The Dalai Lama travels the world frequently, teaching people
about Buddhism and the plight of the Tibetan people. A man without many
possessions, he always carries a small red bag wherever he goes. According to
the reporter at one event, someone in the audience asked the Dalai Lama what
was in his bag.
Immediately, he opened it and began pulling out objects for all to see. A
chocolate bar, a case for his glasses, a toothbrush, Kleenex tissues, and then after
a pause—a single candy, which he promptly unwrapped and popped into his
mouth.
How much stuff do you carry with you when you travel? Is too much “stuff”
taking away your time?
Most of my friends have second homes. Some are in New York, others at the
Jersey shore, others have ski cabins in the Poconos. They are surprised that I
don’t have a vacation home. What they don’t realize is that I’ve listened very
carefully when they talk about their homes. Rarely do they talk about how much
joy they are getting from them. But I definitely hear it when they tell me that
they have to deal with the aftermath of a break-in, or that Hurricane Sandy put
three feet of water in their first floor, or that they’ve rented it out and someone
trashed the place.
A second home is just one example to show the truth that all objects come
with a cost, like collectible knickknacks that need to be dusted every week. The

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bigger the house, the more rooms that need to be cleaned. Electronic gadgets
need to be learned, set up, stored, Bluetooth-paired, and ultimately fixed! Pools
need to be cleaned. Pets need to get walked, groomed, and taken to the vet.
Boats put in and taken out of the water.
With three school-age kids, I think my suburban lifestyle is practical. But
once the kids are all out of the house, I will be too! I envision getting rid of
almost everything I own (I’ll pack up the sentimental stuff—there won’t be
much—and put it in a climate-controlled storage facility) and just spend a year
renting an amazing apartment in a different city each year until I get bored with
that or die. New York, Barcelona, Amalfi, Sydney or Melbourne, Hong Kong,
La Jolla or Napa, who knows where!
The lesson isn’t that all “things” are bad—I have some toys to drive and two
cats. It’s just that all things require time, and we should think twice before
acquiring them.
While we may not want to limit our possessions to only that which fits into
one small red bag, we can probably take inspiration from the Dalai Lama, who
clearly doesn’t need objects to feel happy.
The 80/20 Mindset
The important takeaway from this chapter on the Pareto principle is not to run
around with a calculator and actually do the math to figure out 80 percent and 20
percent calculations in different areas of your life.
It’s more important to have a mindset of identifying the few things and
activities that will give you outsized returns. You want to:
•
Look for shortcuts.
•
Do the most important things exceptionally well, and the rest
just “good enough” or not at all.
•
Develop your skills to be exceptional in a few targeted areas;
don’t try to master everything.
•
Realize that you can work less, stress less, and increase your
happiness by figuring out the 20 percent of goals and activities that
are most important to you.
How Does This Apply If You’re A(n)...