The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few or the principle of factor sparsity states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, after whom this law is named, observed back in 1906 that 20% of the population owned 80% of the land in Italy; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.
Over the years, this principle appears to have taken the manner of a natural phenomenon because of its application to many areas of human enterprise, including but not limited to customer sales, customer relationship management, human developmental biology, health care and even criminology studies that show that 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of criminals!
The focus of this article using this principle has to do with what we desire to achieve in life. Everyday, we have so many activities in which we are engaged. Without a conscious effort to account for each activity and the value it adds, it is so easy to lose one’s self and focus in the midst of all these activities.
By value here, I mean every activity should be scrutinized to determine whether it is leading us to our goals in life or not. If you do decide to take this seriously, you will discover that it is roughly about 20% of your activities that are focused on what you want to accomplish in life.
Most of the other events representing the remaining 80% will just be on mundane things that have taken your time for the day.
It now behoves on you to concentrate your energies on those 20% of activities because it is in their doing that you will get to your destination, purpose or life’s goal.
In life, so many things are required but only few are important. A typical example of this is found in sacred scriptures (Luke 10:38–42) when our Lord Jesus visited Martha, Mary and Lazarus in their home.
While Mary sat down and was listening to Jesus speak, Martha was busy preparing what was to be used in entertaining Jesus. Martha later got upset that Mary was not coming out to help her and she then came and complained to Jesus to ask Mary to come give her a helping hand she was the only one handling everything.
Jesus then responded (Luke 10: 41-42), “Martha, Martha, you are full of care and troubled about such a number of things. Little is needed, or even one thing only: for Mary has taken that good part, which will not be taken away from her”. (Bible in Basic English).
As painful and hard hitting as that statement could have been to Martha as that was not the response she was expecting, Jesus was passing a very important message to her as to every other Christian and indeed everyone else.
That message is also found in Jesus’ response to satan’s temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:4), “It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God”.
Jesus’ message to Martha and the rest of us can equally be applied thus: in all the many different activities we do engage in from second to second every moment of our lives, there are only very few things that are very important that we need to focus our attention on.
As I said at the start of this article, if you have a purpose or an objective in life to accomplish, you will need to scrutinize your activities and focus more of your efforts on those activities that will give the greatest results.
As I will continue to emphasise, it all begins with your thought process. You can achieve all you desire as long as your thoughts are predominantly on what you want; thus will your actions move you in the right direction to achieve your purpose.
(c) copyright Gabriel Ama
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