Achieve More with Less: The Power of the Pareto Principle | Holistic Happiness Club | EP 68

In this episode of the Holistic Happiness Club podcast, host Akshay Tiwari dives deep into the powerful Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, and how it can help you achieve more with less effort. Discover how focusing on the vital 20% of tasks can deliver 80% of your results, maximizing your productivity, improving your work-life balance, and helping you succeed in areas like health, fitness, relationships, and financial growth. Whether you want to boost your productivity, minimize stress, or enhance your overall happiness, this episode provides actionable insights on using the Pareto Principle to simplify your life and make significant progress.

Learn the secrets to:

• Maximizing results with minimal effort
• Applying the 80/20 rule in your personal development
• Achieving work-life balance with strategic focus
• Using the Pareto Principle to improve your health, wealth, and relationships

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My Channel is about Holistic Happiness. 

I come up with the topics I think are necessary for 360 degrees of happiness; when I say holistic happiness or 360-degree happiness, it includes health, Success, career, work life, social life, and every other aspect of life. I focus on mental health primarily, but mental health cannot be excluded from any aspect of life.


So, my focus is Happiness, which includes not only positive psychology like gratitude, mindfulness, surrender, forgiveness, letting go, etc., but also your success in life, be it in your career or anything else that you consider a success. I believe Happiness can only be inclusive.

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Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Holistic Happiness Club. First thing first, my apologies that I could not publish any episode on the last Tuesday. So my apologies. There were some issues which I could not figure out till the last moment I had to let go publishing this episode on the last Tuesday. So, my apologies. But anyways, they say that don't miss twice in a row. So here I am on this Tuesday, publishing a new episode. This episode is about power of 80 20 rule. It is a very, very powerful rule when it comes to enhance your productivity while also minimizing your effort. It tells you to concentrate your effort on the very, very important things. So we will unravel this in different areas of our life. We will talk more about this rule and how this rule can transform every area of your life. That is what we are going to discuss in this episode today. But before that, before we get into the episode, I just want to say thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening and tuning into holistic happiness club. And special, special thank you to all those who tune into holistic happiness club every single week. Your support, your investment of time into holistic happiness club. That's the fuel, that's the motivation that I have to show up every single week with some meaningful content. And as always, I will try to provide you the best value of your time. So hang tight and enjoy this episode. For those of you who don't know me or who is listening for the first time, my name is Akshay Tiwari. I'm a holistic happiness coach. I'm the author of the book named Ashar and the founder of Holistic Happiness Club. Holistic Happiness Club is a place where we talk about happiness holistically. We understand that happiness is not a single faceted thing. It's a multifaceted concept. Everything that touches our life is part of our happiness, and that is why we try to talk about everything that is part of our life that is part of happiness. In holistic Happiness club. More about me and more about holistic Happiness club in the end of the episode. For now, sit back, relax and enjoy the episode. All right, so let's get into the episode of the day, which is applying the 80 20 rule. 80 20 rule is also known as Pareto principle because it was coined by an economist. His name was Wilfredo Pareto. He was an italian economist. And in the early 20th century, he saw that 80% of italian land is being owned by 20% of the people. And that is how he coined this rule. And later on, we found, and he also found that this rule applies more or less everywhere, not only in economy, but in our daily life as well. So 80 20 rule, or parent principle, is about efficiency because it says the 80% of the outcome comes from 20% of key input or 20% of key effort, right? So it is about maximizing your productivity, maximizing your efficiency while concentrating your effort on the most meaningful things. So by using 80 20 rule, you may not win a medal, but you will do extremely better in every area of your life. Alright? So when I'm saying you may not win the medal because it says about 80 20, meaning you will achieve the 80% of the outcome, which is good enough for many of us. But if you want to achieve the hundred percent of the outcome, you may need to focus a lot more on lot many other things. So here, I'm not guiding you to become an Olympian by using this rule, but you can do a lot better in many, many areas of your life. Even if you are an Olympian. Even if you want to perfect something in your life, you want to be the top person in some particular area. But there are other areas of your life as well. You can be perfect in one area, but in any, every other area, you can apply this 80 20 rule and you can live a reasonably good, reasonably well life in all areas of your life. All right? So as I said, it is about efficiency. It is about being mindful. That which 20% of key input are giving you the 80% of result. So we will delve deeper into this and we will see how in each area of our life, this 80 20 rule applies. Alright? So what it says, it says that we need to identify the key input. As I said that it says that 20% of the efforts drive 80% of the results. So we need to find out what are those 20% of the key inputs or the key efforts that are driving 80% of the results. Okay? And then once we identify that. Second point is we need to focus on high value tasks. So we need to identify the tasks which are giving you the most result and they are taking less time. And we need to focus on those tasks. So number third is optimize productivity, and how you are going to do is prioritize critical activities for greater efficiency. Again, so it says that you need to identify 20% of the key inputs or the key efforts or the key area that are driving 80% of the output in any area of life. I might sound like a broken record, I'm saying again and again, 20 and 80. 20 and 80. But this is very important that it sink in your head so that you start seeing every area of your life in these terms, that there can be some 20% key input that are driving 80% of the result. We need to focus only on those 20%. Right. All right, so let's see. Let's see one example. One area of our life. So one area which everyone, everyone should master, and I should not say master, but everyone should look for, everyone should care for, is our health and fitness. Okay, so how 80%. Sorry, 80 20 rule applies in the health and fitness area of our life. So what it says in exercise. Also, you can apply this 80 20 rule. How there can be 20% of the key exercises that will give you the maximum result. Unless you are planning to go on stage and become a bodybuilder, then this might not be for you, for, but for general public people who goes to office and they have other jobs for them, this rule means that you need to focus on 20, 20% of the exercises. Key exercises like compound movement, like push ups, like squats, like deadlifts, these kind of exercises, they have a high impact in the multiple group of muscles and they can give you a good amount of muscle building, a good amount of fat loss, good amount of strength. And there are handful of those exercise, like seven or eight exercises that you can do and you can drive 80% of the result. You may not look like ultra ribbed and like a bodybuilder who goes on stage, but it will give you a decent amount of buildup of decent amount of hypertrophy as well, and decent amount of strength as well. Now, when it comes to recovery, again, you can apply the same 80 20 principle here as well. Now, because you are focusing on 20% of the key input, you need to prioritize your rest as well. So instead of going to gym every single day, you need to prioritize your rest and recovery. You can go to gym three times a week or maybe four times a week. Rest of the time, rest of the days, you can prioritize for recovery. Now, if you are worried that if you will not go to gym, then you will slip from the habit of going to the gym, then you can prioritize for active recovery like yoga sessions, like walking, etcetera. That will give you a decent amount of exercise and, you know, stress, strength, flexibility, also cardio and also active recovery from muscle building. And when it comes to nutrition, similarly, you can again apply your 80 20 rule here. By focusing on key nutrient areas, you can complete your nutrition needs. Instead of obsessing about every single nutrient, every single calorie. What you can do is you can focus on one or two meal very greatly, like breakfast or lunch. And you can focus on key nutrient group, like protein, like leafy greens, like sprouts or something. On focusing. By focusing on these things, 80% of your nutrient needs are going to get fulfilled. Okay? Focus on natural food, focus on lentils, focus on pulses. Right. By focusing on your protein, by focusing on leafy greens, vegetable fruits, that's it. 80% of your nutrient needs are covered. And if you are focusing one or two meal in a day, instead of, you know, obsessing about every single meal, this 20% of key focus can complete your 80% of the nutrition and you can go about having fun rest of the day, right? All right. So by applying this 20 and 80. 80 20 rule, Pareto principle, whatever you want to call, you can simplify your health and fitness a lot. You can simplify your nutrition a lot, which is often, often thought as a very, very complex subject. Right? It might be very complex. If you are dealing with some particular issue, then you need to. Yes. Then you need to have some health practitioner who, who is guiding you, then this might not be working. But 80% of the time, this 80 20 rule will work. Right? All right. So that was about health and fitness. Let's look into some other areas where productivity is needed. So again, what you need to do is you need to prioritize your task here. Focus on high impact activities that are driving 80% of your result. So, for example, email management, right? And how, how does that work? You might be getting hundred email every day, but there will be maximum 20 emails which are of use. So. But by just replying to those 20 emails, you can maximize your impact. That is what it is saying. Now, this number, 80 and 20, it's not hard and fast. You cannot say that. Okay, if it is not 81 and 90, that can happen a little bit here and there can happen. It is just a rough guideline that 80% of your result will be driven by 20% of your key effort. Right? Similarly, you can use time blocking instead of working throughout the day. You can block your time. Some, you know, focus time, you can have there in this focus time, this time blocks. You can do some deep work. You can call it power hours or something. You can do some deep work. And within 20% amount of time, you can drive 80% of your result in any area of your life. That is what 80 per 80 20 rule is. And that is how it is going to maximize your productivity. Now, before I go ahead and I explore some other areas where you can apply this 80 20 rule and you can simplify that area of your life, I have a very special request to all of you. If you are listening to this podcast on Spotify or iTunes, they have a very few very special feature that you can rate this podcast up to five star. And you can also leave some suggestion feedback as well. So please rate this podcast up to five star and let me know your suggestion, your feedback about this podcast. Whatever you think about this, if there is anything that you want to hear from me, if there is any topic that you want me to talk about, please let me know. I'm eager to hear and incorporate your suggestion. And if you are listening to this on YouTube, please like this video, please share this video and please also subscribe to the channel. So that was the special request. Let's move forward to the episode of the day. All right. How you can reduce stress and clutter, right, by using 80 20 principles. Now, it says that 80% of the stress is coming from the 20% of the stressors, meaning 80% of your stress is just coming from 20% of the things. So if you can focus only on those 20%, you can get rid of major chunk of your stress. Think about it. If you have stress, it might not be hundred things that are going on in your head. There might be two or three that are the major, major thing that are going in your head. And that is giving you the maximum amount of stress. So if you sit down, focus on one by one, focus on those stressors one by one, there will be at a time, there will be maximum two or three, right? Barring few exceptions, most of the time it is two or three. That's it. More than that, we are not having that capacity to focus on so many things at a time, right? So there will be two or three maximum major things that are giving you 80% of the stress. So just sit down, take a pen and paper or your notepad, digital notepad, I mean, and start writing about it. What it is, how you can solve it, what you are, what are your immediate action, what are your medium term action that you need to take? And once you will start writing about it, I am sure that it will give you the relief from 80% of the stress, right? So focus only on 20% of the technique. That will give you 80% of the benefit, 20% of the stressors that are driving 80% of your stress. Similarly, you can declutter physical space and mental space as well, which is called minimalism. So how this principle applies in minimalism and decluttering your physical and mental space is that 80% of the time, you are using 20% of the positions. All right, there is a great, great documentary that is available on Netflix as well. I think the name of the documentary is less is now. Yeah, that is the name of the documentary. Less is now. In that they have shown that there was a person who wanted to simplify things. He wanted to explore this minimalism lifestyle. So what he did, he wanted to simplify. So what he did, he packed every item in his household as if he is going to shift. He packed every item. From next day onward, he just took out only those item which were needed for that particular moment, not everything. And he was surprised that even after a month, even after a month, 80% of his stuff was still packed. So, that is what this rule is saying to you. That 80% of the time, you are using only 20% of the position that you have. So focus on those 20%. And if there is anything else that you have not used for more than a year, and if you think that it can be discarded, you can discard it, you can resell it, you can donate it, whatever. In whatever way you want to discard. There is another episode that I have dedicated on this podcast that you can check it out and how you can discard those things, if it is of emotional value, if it is of financial value, how you can discard those things. So, again, you. It is up to you that how you want to discard that particular item, but you can declutter your physical space. And simply similarly, you can also declutter your mental space because 80% of your problems, the stressors, stress is coming from the 20% of the issue again. So you can focus only on those 20% of the issues. Now for wealth and relationship, right. We'll cover one by one. Let's focus on wealth. It says that 80% of your return comes from the 20% of the investment. And I was checking my portfolio and it is somewhere true around 80% of my return coming from 22, 23% of the investment. Rest of the things are also doing good, but they are not. They have not given that much of the return. My, among my portfolio, the number of stocks which I have bought, only 20% or to be specific, 23% of the stocks, they are doing very good. They have driven the maximum amount of revenue. So I believe that it might be in this vicinity, 20% to 80%. It might be true for all of you as well. So for some people it might be 25%, for some people it might be 30%, but it will be. Some number will be somewhere around that. So you need to focus only on those. So I'm just talking about portfolio, but it might be true for other assets as well, like real estate, like gold, etcetera. So where you are putting, I mean, you need to identify the key 20% area of your investment, which is giving you more than 80% of the return. And you need to focus your mental energy only on managing of that 20% of the investment. So it will save you a lot of energy, it will save you, it will give you a great direction that where your investment should be, where your money should be going. Similarly, for spending as well 20%, cut 20% of expenses for 80% of savings, which says that maximum amount of your expenses are going into some key areas. So what I'm trying to say is, when you try to find out where you. Where you are spending a lot of money, where you should not just try to make a list that where you are spending unnecessarily, like emotional buying, like eating out a lot or maybe going out for party or something, and write down where you are spending money, where you should not be in in order to save money, right. And you will find that 20% of those things are making up to 80% of the expenses. So if you cut down only those 820 percent of the things, or even if you are not able to cut down all 20% of the things, at least cut them. Cut down them. Cut them down by half. If you are cutting them down by half, you are going to save 40% of your money. It's a good number, right? So likewise, you can simplify your investment and spending as well by applying this 80 20 rule. Now, when it comes to relationship, there will be some key elements, okay? Key connections. So let's say you have ten friends, but out of those ten, you will be very, very close to only two. Rest of the eight, yes, they are friend, they are there for you. But you are mostly close to one or two person, right? Or maybe, you know, 100 people, but 20 are very close to you with whom you really, really want to have this connection. So you need to focus your energy in nurturing those 20% of the connection instead of being connected with all hundred people, right? So that is what this 80% 80 20 rule says when it comes to relationship. Also, when it comes to nurturing the relationship, there are few key things that remembering the birthday and some quality time, etcetera, there are few very key things that if you focus on those key things, then your relationship will be all right. Other things, 80% of the time, your relationship will be alright. So this 80 20 rule, roughly, you can apply anywhere. Anywhere, all right? So by applying this 80 20 rule, you can accelerate your learning and growth as well. How? Because it says that 80% of the proficiency will come by mastering 20% of the skills. Isn't it amazing that by just mastering 20% of the skills, you will get 80% of the proficiency in if you are mastering the 20% of the core skills? Okay, so deliberately focused 20% time on targeted practice for 80% improvement. If you want to learn a new. Let's say I have been a programmer, so I will say that if you want to learn new, learn a new programming language. What I would say that focus on key elements and you will find that very quickly you start. You will start doing programming, okay, by just focusing on 20%. I will not. I'm not saying that you will become master, but it is very easy to start with a programming language. It will take a lifetime to become a master. I'm not asking to be a master here, but it will get you started very, very quickly. If you are focusing only on some key elements. Likewise, business priorities, if you want to set those straight, 80% of the revenues might be coming from the 20% of the key clients. So if you are focusing your energy and your money on those 20% of the client, your revenue can increase a lot more, right? So that will help you set your business priorities. All right? So at the end, I would say that embrace this 80 20 mindset, there might be one key area, one key area in your life where you want to master this. But for the rest of the areas of your life, this 80 20 rule is very good. It's a golden rule which you can apply in the rest of the areas of your life. Right? So what you need to do is you need to identify the vital activities, few activities that are very vital and that are driving the majority of the results, and eliminate all those 80% of the trivial things that are wasting your time and energy. And then you need to optimize and create a strategy that your efforts are mostly focused on, those vital things, those 20% key inputs that are driving majority of the results. By embracing this, you can. What you can do is by embracing this, you can minimize your effort in all other areas of your life which are not key according to you, where you are not that much focused, you can minimize your effort, but still drive maximum amount of result. All right, so that was the end of the topic of the day. So let me know how did you like it? Let me know your feedback if there was anything that you would want me to add here or if there is any question that you want to ask. Alright, so that was the end of the topic of the day. But before I end this episode, I want to add few more things that one of the things is that I have written an ebook. It's a pocket size ebook. The title of the ebook is the Happiness Blueprint. Practical strategies for a fulfilled life. As I said, it's a pocket size ebook. It is full of practical strategies, actionable items that you can apply right now in your life and you can feel the increase in your happiness quotient and in your growth, in your success. So I recommend you that you download this ebook. Pocket size ebook to download this ebook, the link is given in the description. Also, if you want to connect with me on a one to one basis, you want to discuss your roadblocks for your success and happiness and you want to discuss how you can eliminate those roadblocks in a one to one call, then the link is given in the description. You can follow that link and book a one to one call with me. Also, if you want to connect with me on social media then Instagram is the place and happiness architect is my Instagram handle. You can reach out to that Instagram account there. I'm most active and you can leave me a DM and I will make sure that I'm replying to that. Also, if you want to check out more about me then more information is available on my website which is Akshay Tiwari dot in. So that is the end of the episode and till the time we are seeing each other again, we are connecting again. Take care of yourself. Take care of your loved one. Take care of the people around you. Bye bye. Take care. God bless you. Always remember that happiness is a lifestyle.