Keen business managers and analysts alike notice a strange but ultimately unsurprising trend—80 percent of useful output in business comes from about 20 percent of effort input. This rule, which is called the 80-20 Rule or, even more descriptively, the Law of the Vital Few, means that the average employee wastes almost 80 percent of her time in unproductive tasks or, just as likely, in trying to appear productive.
What this means for you is that on the one hand there are tasks that really change the bottom line, and on the other, tasks that basically do very little for you or for your company but that are extremly time-consuming. In all likelihood, you have already developed a built-in efficacy meter that allows you to gauge whether something will have a useful payoff or be a useless energy waster.
The trick, of course, is not just distinguishing between the useful and the useless but actually putting this knowledge to work. And you’ll see throughout the next few chapters what this means in concrete terms, as you make judgments about which meetings, technology, and projects deserve your valuable time. More importantly, you’ll come to see that it’s your duty to yourself and your company to do things that will further your company’s business in meaningful ways and not waste your time jumping through hoops just because the hoops are there.
So get out that pen and paper. It’s list time again. Now we’re tackling to-dos. And the first thing to remember—never ever ever do something simply because it’s randomly placed on the top of a to-do list. Or because it seems the easiest to tackle. Your lists must reflect priorities.
First. Make a list of all of the things you are trying to accomplish in the next few days or weeks. Look at it. Accept that you cannot do everything. If the list has twenty things on it, circle those five that will have the highest impact. Remember to pick things that play to your strengths. If you know you won’t do it well, don’t take it on. And circle the few that are important for your professional satisfaction. Be realistic; there may be a few low-impact but necessary chores that have to stay on the list. If so, squeeze them in among the critical items. But cross the rest off.
Second. Write down your big-picture goal for the month— this is a concrete definition of something important you want to achieve this month, something that goes beyond your day-to-day tasks. Then write down ten things it will take to help you get there. Then pretend somebody is pointing a gun at you and you have to pick the top two actions. Focus on those two and those two alone.
Third. Write down your big-picture goal for the year. (This one is good for those of us who get lost in the trees.) And then break it down by month, by week, even by day. If your goal, for example, is to have ten new clients by the end of the year, break it down, each time listing the actions you can take to get there. Then simply make sure you are spending substantial time on those actions each month, each week, each day.
As you do this, remember that as overwhelming as it might seem, you have to think BIG as you make these priority lists. Remember to get out of the weeds. Otherwise, you’ll be left juggling what other people hand to you, or tackling things on your list that seem “easy.” While you might feel as if you are getting things done, in reality these small tasks simply eat up all of your time and potentially sabotage your career.
Linda Brooks, our New York lawyer, observes this tendency in women every day:
“I see a lot of women being what we call ‘detail-oriented’ and making sure that all the words on the paper are right, when a guy of similar seniority will not focus so much on the words but sit around thinking about bigger issues in a deal and trying to think outside the box, and doing all of that creative stuff. Guys step up to it much earlier and sometimes, frankly, too soon, and you have to smack them down and say ‘Get the f***ing papers right, and then we can start talking about how to solve Exxon’s balance sheet problem,’ ” she laughs. “It’s funny, you’ll see a guy who has been a lawyer for exactly three days really stepping up. And then you will see a woman who’s been doing this for three years, and she’s redoing the junior associate’s paperwork because he didn’t get it right. It happens all the time, it’s so frustrating.”
Robin Ehlers from General Mills thinks working according to smart priorities allows her a full-time job and plenty of freedom and time with her family
“Occasionally,” she says, “I see that other people are working more ‘frantically’ than I am, but frankly, I think I just work smarter. I don’t spend time on phone calls worrying about office politics, I don’t waste time on meetings or hanging out at the office. I’m extremely bottom-line focused, and I think the company appreciates that. I really focus on the things that have to get done to move the business forward—and I don’t really worry about a lot of the stuff that isn’t value added.”