Improve your productivity by 80%. Get rid of your tasks

How do you apply the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule) to your schedule?

• Have a clear overview of your schedule and your daily tasks.
• Identify which tasks take you the most time to complete.
• Identify which tasks take you the least time to complete.
• Identify which tasks bring you the most value.
• Identify which tasks bring you the least value.
• Get rid of low-value tasks.
• Prioritize lever-moving tasks.
• Revise monthly.

Whether you work a 9-to-5 job or are your own boss, you probably have some sort of calendar or schedule. You understand the importance of scheduling your work and blocking your time to stay productive.

But how productive can you get?

When we look at the typical example of 9-to-5, most workplaces have huge backlogs of work for you and your team. It will hold hundreds of tasks, but you will be given a dozen. Just enough to keep you going.

HR knows something. They know how to keep you busy.

Are those tasks important?

Some of them may be.

But most of them are just a waste of time.

Let’s say 80% of them bring no value, and 20% actually move the levers.

Now, 80% of workers will be sucked into this spiraling hell of work, while 20% of workers will blame the boss or their manager. Overall, they will not be happy.

From my own experience, we had a ton of tasks that could have been abandoned, but we still had to do them.

Because the owner paid for the tasks, we now have to provide value by doing the work.

It quickly becomes an illusion of work. An illusion of productivity and an illusion of being busy.

While, in fact, you are not busy. You are doing empty work and lying to yourself about being productive.

Now, it’s a good question if it’s yourself who’s lying or your boss or manager.

But they are exposed to the same illusions as you are.

Right! We’ve talked about how this exploitation looks while working from 9 to 5.

But what happens when you become a freelancer? When you are your own boss and you run a single-person business, you tend to do everything.

And by everything, I mean it.

You do the marketing, the sales, put up ads, create websites, write copy and other content, do outreach, do improvements, do research, hire contractors, manage money, and much more.

It’s a lot to handle for a single person.

But there’s something awe-inspiring and fulfilling about it. I won’t get into much detail about this right now, so maybe we can discuss this in future blog posts.

Since you have to juggle a lot of tasks at once, you tend to quickly ignore what works and what doesn’t.

Your schedule quickly becomes clogged up with useless tasks like changing some pictures on a website, writing some additional content no one reads (because you don’t promote it), and creating tools no one uses (because you don’t promote them or there is no market fit for them).

It’s amazing to schedule your work and follow a routine, but it has to be done in a way to get the most out of it.

The harsh reality is that 80% of the tasks on your to-do list won’t make much change, if any. You have to identify the 20% of tasks that actually move you forward.

Let’s create an example list of tasks.

1. Change a picture on the website.
2. Improve my CTAs
3. Call 20 prospects.
4. Order a new book.
5. Add an “About Us” section.
6. Post on Instagram
7. Send 100 cold outreach emails.
8. Watch this new YouTube video.
9. Edit the main headline on my website.
10. Improve the “Benefits” section.

Now, can we identify the 80% of tasks that don’t really need to be done and the 20% that will bring some actual value?

I would argue that calling 20 prospects and sending out 100 cold outreach emails are more important than tweaking some small items on your website or posting on Instagram.

By value, I mean closing clients and bringing in revenue from product or service sales.

Yes, having a clean-looking website or a rich social media profile is important, but in the grand scheme of things, they have less value than putting in the work to create connections and working partnerships.

It’s difficult to apply the 80/20 rule when you’re just starting out, and it will probably take you a few weeks or a couple of months to get good at it. Heck, you could even apply the 20-hour rule to get good at applying this Pareto principle. You can read more about it here: How it takes 20 hours to get good at something.

But once you have it nailed down, your schedule and your tasks will be more valuable.

How do you apply the Pareto principle (the 80/20 rule) to your schedule?

Have a clear overview of your schedule and your daily tasks.
You need to be aware of what you do and when you do it.

Identify which tasks take you the most time to complete.

You need to know what tasks take the most time out of your day. Write them down. What can be improved, automated, or delegated?

Identify which tasks take you the least time to complete.

You need to know what tasks take you the least amount of time to complete. Maybe those tasks are low-priority?

Identify which tasks bring you the most value.

From your list of tasks, which ones bring you the most value? By value, I mean revenue. What gets you more clients, more money, and more connections?

Identify which tasks bring you the least value.

Now you need to know what tasks bring you the least value. These tasks probably have little to no effect on how many clients you can bring in or how many sales you can close. These tasks can be removed entirely, automated, or even delegated if they have the potential to become valuable in the future.

Once you have done this, here comes the fun part: getting rid of the majority of tasks. Or, well, delegating or automating them.

Get rid of any task that brings you the least value.

If these tasks take you a lot of time to complete and yield no real value, get rid of them. It will free up a lot of time in your day to focus on the most important 20% of tasks.

Prioritize high-value tasks based on the value they provide.

Say making 20 calls has the potential to bring in $10k, and sending out 100 cold emails has the potential to bring in $5k. Prioritize making 20 calls first, and only then send out those 100 cold emails.

Automate or delegate high-value tasks that take little time to complete.

If you have the means, try automating these tasks or hiring a virtual assistant to do them for you. It will free up your time so you can focus on doubling down on more important tasks.

This will become a habit of reviewing your schedule and making changes. Low-value task creep is a real thing, so your schedule needs to be revised periodically.

All in all, if you want to make the most out of your time and avoid the illusion of work, use the Pareto principle to optimize your schedule and your tasks. You will free up a lot of time and bring in way more value than continuously working on the same meaningless tasks that bring little to no value.