How to Apply the "80-20 Rule" to Get 10X Bigger Results, Fast
The 80/20 Rule or "Pareto Principle" specifies that 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes, asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs.
Put simply, 20% of what you do creates 80% or more of your results. Conversely, 80% of what you're now doing is producing 20% or less of your results.
In this article, I'm going to explain how to apply 80/20-thinking to produce 10X bigger and better results. I'll show why going 10X bigger is actually far easier than going for marginal or linear progress. Finally, I'll explain the consequences-- mostly emotional-- that you'll have to fully embrace to make this level of growth and transformation not only possible but an ongoing lifestyle.
The Goal Determines the Process (Why You Must Have 10X-Bigger Goals)
"The bigger the vision, the better your decisions."--Unknown source
According to constraint theory, every "system" has a primary purpose or "goal." A system could be a business, a team, a family, or even an individual.
Clarifying the "goal" is the most important thing a person, team, or organization can do. Without being clear on the goal, you won't know where to direct your efforts. You also won't be able to identify the key constraints (i.e., "bottlenecks") stopping you from achieving the goal.
The goal determines the process because the goal clarifies the core constraints stopping you from achieving the goal.
According to Dr. Alan Barnard, one of the leading experts on constraint theory and decision-making, making your goals ridiculously bigger is helpful for identifying the highest-leverage constraints. If you have small goals, then it's hard to separate the signal from the noise. Small goals aren't big enough to force clarity. To achieve marginal growth, say 10% higher revenue or 10% progress in some area, there are seemingly infinite ways you could achieve that goal.
Goals aren't useful if there are infinite potential ways you could achieve them, because that creates decision fatigue or paralysis-by-analysis.
"Impossibly" big goals are very practical, because when a goal is really really big-- like 10X revenue, 10X more free time, etc. -- there aren't infinite ways you could achieve the goal. On the contrary, there are almost no ways to achieve such enormous "10X-level" goals. This is one of the primary reasons they are so helpful.
This, then, is the first step to even being able to apply the 80/20 principle effectively. Firstly, you must define your goal-- the transformation or outcome that is incredibly important and meaningful to you and others. Then, you must make the goal big enough that organically, the 80% and 20% begin to separate themselves.
When you have small goals, it's very hard to distinguish the 80/20.
Only when you make the goal big enough does it become obvious which strategies, relationships, or behaviors won't work. Again, when you're thinking 10X bigger, almost nothing will work. And indeed, at least 80% of what you're now doing won't get you to 10X. Put another way, 80% of what you're now doing is an utter distraction from going 10X.
But you'll only see this by having a 10X vision. As the author, Steven Kotler, explains in The Art of Impossible:
"MTP's (Massive Transformative Purposes), utilized properly, aren't aspirational, they're filtrational: they weed out the work that doesn't matter."
Clarify the "20%" and Set 10X-Higher Standards in the "20%"
“If you have more than three priorities, you don't have any."--Jim Collins, Good to Great
Identifying or clarifying the "20%" takes a little bit of work. A helpful way of doing it is by defining your 3 core priorities, which are most relevant to the 10X-jump you want to make as a person.
In the book, Man's Search for Meaning, Austrian psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, details his experience of surviving the Nazi concentration camps. He also distills the psychology of those in the camps, and what ultimately led some to survive and thrive, while others died.
Frankl's core premise can be distilled by a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, which quote Frankl himself often used throughout Man's Search for Meaning: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
For Frankl, the "why" was not some broad or vague purpose. Rather, the "why" which enables you to "bear any how" is actually a highly specific goal. This goal is so important and powerful that it enables you to "bear any how." It gives your life meaning and purpose.
If a person lacked a goal to strive for, Frankl noticed that they quickly died. Hope, it turns out, is just as important as air, food, and water for human beings, especially when you're in such a traumatic state. As author Seth Godin stated, "Hope is an essential part of the human condition. Without hope, we wither and perish."
In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl actually describes the "goal" that enabled him to survive. As he stated:
"When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in."
Therefore, Frankl and others did everything in their power to help their fellow concentration-camp inmates to either maintain or create a "goal" that acted as their spiritual strength, reason to survive, reason to find joy in their suffering, reason to keep going... As Frankl stated:
"Any attempt at fighting the camp’s [pathological] influence on the prisoner by [therapeutic] methods had to aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal to which he could look forward. Instinctively some of the prisoners attempted to find one on their own. It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future-sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence."
Why does all of this matter?
And what does it have to do with selecting 3 core priorities?
Well, you want to see these 3 priorities as important as Frankl saw having a "goal" or "purpose" in the concentration camps.
These 3 priorities reflect your purpose, here and now. They are likely not the same 3 priorities you had in a previous chapter of your life. But based on where you're at now and based on what you feel is most important, these 3 priorities are what you want to focus on and dedicate yourself to.
Thus, these 3 priorities are your "20%." To go 10X in a meaningful way, you clarify your 3 priorities and then elevate your personal standards in those 3 areas by 10X.
If your priority is finances, then you elevate your standards for your finances by 10X.
If your priority is family, then you elevate your standards in your family by 10X.
Only you can choose your standards. Only you can choose your priorities. But not choosing is still making a choice-- even if it's simply the choice to remain undecided and distracted. Said author Zig Ziglar, "It's better to be a meaningful specific than a wandering generality."
Why standards?
Your standards as a person are another way of describing your identity. Your identity is the core aspect of yourself and the lens through which you see the world, as well as the driver of your actions and behaviors.
Simply put, your identity is what you're most committed to as a person.
But how do you know what you're "most committed to"?
Your standards.
Your standards are how you hold yourself. They're what you deem acceptable. They're what you expect of yourself and others.
If you have low or no standards in a particular area, then you how low or no commitment in that area.
Another way of looking at "standards" is that they are your "floor," which you rarely if ever go beneath in a particular area. For example, my cousin is an avid World of Warcraft player. One of the best on his server. He recently told me he left his long-time "guild" because "They weren't up to my standards." He wanted to play with better and more serious players.
World of Warcraft is one of my cousin's 3 priorities, and thus he continually elevates his standards in those areas. World of Warcraft is certainly not one of my priorities, but I have no judgment for what someone else chooses.
I can only choose my own priorities and standards.
You cannot achieve a goal until it becomes a standard. Once something is a standard, it's a 100% commitment. Once something is a commitment, it then becomes a core aspect of your identity, and how you do things.
Going 10X then is about clarifying the few areas in your life that matter most to you-- your 3 priorities-- and then 10Xing your standards in those few areas.
By elevating your standards in your "big 3 priorities," you'll quickly be able to see all the areas of your life that are outside those big 3.
Exercise:
What are your 3 core priorities right now, which are most important to who you are now but also to your future self?
What would it look like to raise your standards 10X in those 3 priorities? Be as specific as possible.
What would happen if you committed 100% to those new 10X standards? What would you now have to start saying "No" to?
Eliminate Your "80%"
"We are kept from our goals, not by obstacles, but by a clear path to lesser goals."-- Robert Brault
The 80% is "lesser goals." Spending any time or attention on the 80% reflects a lack of commitment to going 10X. In other words, by continuing to engage in the 80%, you're demonstrating to yourself and others that you're still committed to what you now have.
In the book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, leadership experts Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp state:
"Commitment is a statement of what 'is.' You can know what you’re committed to by your results, not by what you say your commitments are. We are all committed. We are all producing results. The result is proof of a commitment."
Only when you commit to 10X, and thus shift your focus solely to the 20%, will you begin changing your life.
10X is a filter, a very fine filter. Only the core 20% can pass through that filter. Therefore, you must let go of the 80%, and the sooner you do, the faster you'll go 10X.
Naturally, letting go of the 80% can be difficult. It's what go you here. It's a huge aspect of your life-- literally 80% of your life, lol.
According to Prospect Theory, humans have a deep and enormous aversion to loss. We fear and avoid loss far more than we seek gain, in many respects. Losses hurt more than gains feel good. And the after-effects of loss can be a trauma that lasts a lifetime.
Consequently, letting go of the 80% can feel like an enormous loss. It's the letting go of huge aspects of your identity. If you're someone who's gone 10X before, meaning you're already successful, then the 80% is likely many of the activities, roles, and the identity that got you where you're at.
What got you here won't get you there.
Every time you go 10X, you'll be required to simplify your focus.
You simplify first, then you multiply what you've simplified-- your "20%."
If something remains "20%," then it's not a commitment, it's a hobby. It's a side-gig, but it's not the full-you.
If you want to go from hobbyist to professional, then it must become your full-time gig.
Eventually, if you commit 100% to your "20%" and make 10X your standard, your 20% will eventually become your new 100%. It will become your new normal. That's what happens when something becomes a standard.
You evolve into your 10X-next-level-self.
At that new 10X level, you'll be far simpler and clearer than you now are. You'll actually be 10X more niche and focused, though the overall impact and ripple effects of your efforts will be exponentially bigger.
If you want to go 10X again from there, you'll go through the same process. You clarify your core 3 priorities at that new level and 10X your standard in those areas. This will then filter-out the new 80% which is dramatically beyond and better than the life you now have. It's actually better than anything you can now imagine.
The question at that point will be: Will you settle for where you're at, or will you 10X your vision again and be transformed by that vision and purpose?
Originally Published by
Published on September 12, 2022
Source: Next Generation Automation