27 The 80/20 Principle: Do Less, Achieve More

Most people don’t have a time problem. They have a focus problem. If 80% of your results are coming from 20% of your effort, then staying “busy” can be the most expensive habit you have.

We walk through the 80/20 rule (the Pareto principle) in plain language and make it practical across three areas: revenue, execution, and stress. First, we look at clients and relationships. A small slice of clients often generates most of your revenue, and an even smaller slice of relationships drives referrals and opportunities. We talk through how to identify those highest value clients, double down on service and trust, and stop letting the wrong demands dominate your day.

Next, we shift to productivity and time management. We compare high-impact work like strategic thinking, business development, key client conversations, and real decision-making with the loud distractions like admin, inbox churn, and low-value meetings. The takeaway is simple: schedule the top 20% first, batch it, and guard your calendar aggressively so the noisy 80% doesn’t steal the week.

Finally, we tackle stress by going after root causes. One broken system, one bottleneck, or one difficult client can create most of your friction. Fix the source, and the symptoms fade fast.

If you want more output with less chaos, hit play, then subscribe, share with a friend who’s always slammed, and leave a review. What’s the one task, client, or problem you’re eliminating this week?

Blinn Bates - BlinnBates.com

Woods & Bates, P.C. - WoodsandBates.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Welcome back. What if I told you 80% of your results are coming from just 20% of your efforts? What if the majority of your time is spent on things that don't really move the needle in the direction you want it to move? Today I want to talk to you about the 80-20 principle. This is a principle that was popularized in a book by Richard Koch. And what he's saying essentially is not all effort is created equal. This is sometimes also known as the Pareto principle. And the idea is that a small percentage

The 80 20 Principle Explained

SPEAKER_00 1:00

of our inputs drive the majority of our outputs. So some examples of that. They are saying that 20% of our clients generate 80% of our revenue. Or 20% of the tasks that we do create 80% of the results. 20% of the problems cause 80% of the stress. Now, this isn't exactly 80-20 all the time, but there's certainly an imbalance there. And I think the principle that a few key things matter a lot and that most things don't is pretty sound. Now, why does this matter to us? A lot of people treat all tasks equally. They give equal attention to low value tasks and high value work. They're staying very, very busy, but they're not being effective. What this can lead to is overwhelm, working very long hours, feeling like we have limited progress. And the 80-20 principle, once we understand it and start to see it, flips that because we're starting to focus on what truly drives results. And then anything that

Busy Versus Effective Work

SPEAKER_00 2:05

doesn't, we want to eliminate, delegate, or automate. So productivity isn't necessarily about doing more things, it's about doing more of the things that matter. So let's look at it from the clients and revenue perspective. Typically, in most businesses, a small percentage of our clients generate most of our revenue. And an even smaller percent of our relationships typically drive most of our opportunities. So who are our 20% clients? Who are the clients that are giving us most of our revenue? Those are our highest valued clients. Who are our highest value relationship? Who's sending us business?

Identify Your Highest Value Clients

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Who knows us? Who trusts us? Who are our vocal supporters? We want to spend more time with those clients. We want to spend more time with those relationships, providing better service, building a deeper relationship. And that's going to free us to do more of the work we want because those are the cases that we want, or those are the clients that we want, or the customers that we want. Now, if we look at it from a time and task perspective, what are the 20% of the tasks that we do that generate the most revenue? What moves the projects that we're working on forward and creates some real impact? Some of these might be for CEOs, strategic thinking, business development, client interactions with those 20% clients, high-level decision making. Now compare that to things like sending emails, administrative

Protect Time For High Impact Tasks

SPEAKER_00 3:38

tasks, low value meetings. And this is why we've talked about things like creating the perfect week so that we can schedule these 20% relationships, client meetings, tasks first, batch those together, and then we can delegate anything that shouldn't be on our plate. If we don't know what those 20% are, these 80% tasks and clients and relationships are going to consume our day because those 80% are typically very, very loud. They want our attention and they want our time. Now let's flip this a little bit and talk about problems and stress. A very small number of issues typically create the most stress, whether it's a very difficult client or a system that's broken that's forcing you to do the same thing over and over and over again, or maybe a bottleneck in the organization. Instead of managing these symptoms, we want to go back and solve the root cause. So what's the root cause of our issue? It's the problem client, it's the

Cut Stress By Fixing Root Causes

SPEAKER_00 4:43

problem system, it's the bottleneck. So if we can fix these things, or better yet, eliminate these things that are causing this friction, it'll go away. So fire that problem client. Get rid of them. It may be difficult the first time, but once you do it, I assure you, you're not gonna regret it and you're gonna wish you would have done it way sooner. So, how can we apply this? Well, first and foremost, we have to identify our top 20%. So we want to sit down and we want to look at who are our top 20% clients and customers, what are our top 20% of tasks and activities, and what's our 20% problems? What are the issues that we're dealing with? And we want to schedule our time to match the top 20% clients, tasks, activities, things like that, and guard our calendar aggressively in order to do those things that we know is gonna move

Weekly 20 Percent Review System

SPEAKER_00 5:33

the needle. And we want to reduce the other things. So if it doesn't fall in that top 20% that we've identified, we want to delegate it, we want to automate it if we can, or like that problem client, we want to eliminate it. We're gonna do this every week. So we're gonna reassess every week what's driving our results because that 20% is gonna change over time as you continue to level up. Your 20% is gonna continue to level up and it's not gonna remain static. So this week I would challenge you to identify your top 20% of activities. Block time for those first, then eliminate, delegate, or automate the rest. Once you've done that, you won't have to try to manage everything anymore. High performers typically focus on the few things that matter most, and this 80 20 principle helps wrap our mind around it. Once we focus on what moves the needle and we eliminate the rest, that's how we're gonna maximize our time and elevate our lives.