The 80/20 Principle

View books by Richard Koch.

It Works! - Rated
Richard Koch explains that most of our results are the consequence of just a small proportion of our actions. 80% of any outcome is achieved by merely 20% of the effort.

Identify and concentrate on that 20% and you'll achieve far more, faster. Believing every important task has to be given 100% might make this a tough call for you, but the concept is proven. It will cause you to re-evaluate how you deal with the immediate, urgent and reactive in your life and how a change of attitude can speed you in attaining long-term goals.

Engaging and thought provoking, the book focuses on business but challenges with questions about how we balance personal relationships with our time and energy.

Pay attention to what is really going on! - Rated
Richard Koch explains that most of the good consequences in life flow from an astonishingly small proportion of all our efforts. All of the rest of our efforts - contrary to our expectations of fairness - are producing remarkably few results. In other words, 20% of our efforts are producing 80% of the good results.

If we start to pay attention to what is really going on, then we can cut out the effortsome low value projects, and allow the rest to flourish with no additional work. Although the book focuses more on the business application, this can, of course, be applied to all areas of life.

I found it readable and distinctly thought-provoking. Putting it into practice feels like it requires a degree of daring, particularly for those who believe that the good things in life have to be worked hard for. I'll own up to being one of them, but I'm working hard to get over that particular belief!

save 80% of your reading time - don't read this book - Rated
80% of results come from 20% of our actions. It is for each one of us to discover the productive 20% and then discard the wasted 80% in any given situation - this book cannot do it for us.
That is this book in a nutshell and it is all you need to know... Why it needs 300 odd pages to say this time and time again I have no idea. Just reading the dustcover says it once and that is quite enough. I'd recommend getting on with a productive life and not bothering to read this book.

A counter-intuitive, thought-provoking and high value read - Rated
The 80:20 Principle, statistically observable in a range of phenomena, has been applied to a host of situations - both business and personal - in an engaging and imaginative way. The killer insights available through this book are worth skimming in 20 minutes or absorbing and reflecting on over a lifetime. Whilst the instant kernel - that if we spent time in proportion to the importance and effectiveness of the results we want and value we'd be spending it very differently - is simple to state, changing one's behaviours is much harder. After all, if it was easy, we'd already all be doing it! I found the arguments and ideas in 'The 80:20 Principle' very compelling and persuasive though. This book has caused me to re-evaluate the extent to which dealing with the immediate and the reactive stops the proactive and effective delivery of long-term goals. There are some interesting ideas in this book about building up a network of professional allies; and it also asks some legitimate questions about how well we match the personal relationships we value the most with the deployment of our time and energy. Highly recommended.

Save time - Read and digest the title. - Rated
If you can take in and digest the title 'The 80 / 20 Principle' fully you have no need to read the book.

It does, however, describe copious examples of how 20 percent persperation gives 80 percent results. If you can believe the title you are already more than 80 percent of the way in understanding the whole book.