80/20 in Action: Pareto Principle Examples

If you’re familiar with the business world, you know that even the best tech jobs have to deal with time crunches and overscheduling. It’s easy to get swamped with unimportant tasks and miss out on completing truly important ones, but time management approaches like the Pareto Principle can help you get your priorities straight. It’s easy to find Pareto Principle examples that you can take and use in your own workplace.

That’s why we put together this guide, buckos. In this article, you’ll find some common instances that cry out for Pareto management. We show you how to use Pareto to get them under control. You’ll be amazed at how Pareto’s concepts will help you and your coworkers get your schedule under control and your company moving forward. It’s a terrific option for project managers everywhere.

The Pareto Principle Core Concept

So, with all of this hype, I bet Pareto is a super-complicated idea that requires you to attend a bunch of seminars to really understand how it operates, right? There are lots of project management tools out there, and Pareto is probably one of the more complex ones, yeah? Think again, pal. The notion behind Pareto is a simple one that you can sum up with four numbers: “80/20.”

What Pareto boils down to is an overarching notion to business. Viewed through a Pareto lens, all work is either “vital few” or “trivial many.” The vital few tasks wind up being about 20% of the total, and they outweigh the other 80% in importance. If you get your tasks prioritized and always tackle the 20% before turning to the 80%, you’ll keep your projects moving forward and your career moving upward.

Pareta in Action

So, now we’ve established that Pareta is a valuable weapon in your project management arsenal, along with Kanban and other approaches. How does this work in practical terms? What sorts of situations will you encounter that require you to pull out your Pareta glasses and get a proper order of operation set up? For starters, let’s look at software. Yep, Pareta operates at the software level, too.

It turns out that 20% of bugs cause 80% of software issues. So, if you identify that 20% and start working on squashing them, you can transform your software from error-prone to solid and reliable. You can also apply Pareta to sales. You sales aren’t distributed evenly—20% of clients account for 80% of sales. If you know who your 20% are, you can tailor your pitches and products to them and grow your business.

It’s easy to see Pareta in action when you know how to look, isn’t it? You’ll find time management tools like Pareta all over the business world, and you can apply them to your own work to improve your career. Our guide shows you some key Pareto Principle examples and gives you the tools to make them part of your own business approach.