If you aren’t familiar with the 80/20 rule, it’s the concept that comes from the Pareto Principle, stating that 80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your inputs. As applied to your online marketing business, you can think of it as it relates to what you do each day. You can also apply this to measuring and improving your day to day life.
Typically, about 80% of your income will come from 20% of what you do. In other words, if I am working at my computer about 6 hours a day, only about an hour and twenty minutes of what I do will account for the type of work that makes me any money. The idea is to figure out which activities lead to income generation, and which can be better done by others or not at all.
Entrepreneur and author Richard Koch discussed this in his 1999 book entitled Living The 80/20 Way: Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More. In this book Koch explains how we can apply the 80/20 rule to other aspects of our life. He suggests that we can improve our health, relationships, and our level of income by taking this seriously.
Online we are able to see the results of what we do in our businesses very easily. Take a look at each activity you engage in to see if it is income producing or busywork. Everyone will have a different set of criteria they use for this, but remember that we can improve what we can measure.
Great and timely advice Connie! It’s amazing how much of our time is filled with things that can either be done by someone else or not done at all. What I love about working on-line is that we can measure our results very easily. Thank you for highlighting this. I will be very aware of my ‘busywork’ from now on.
Heather x
Thanks so much for your comment, Heather. I think all of us waste a lot of time on activities we believe are useful, only to find that we have not made any money. As we become more experienced as entrepreneurs, the process becomes much easier.
Connie