The Pareto Distribution is a probability distribution originally used by economist Vilfredo Pareto to describe the land or wealth distribution in 1906 Italy between the poor and the rich. It has since been used to describe a host of other observable phenomena.

The Pareto Distribution states that 20% of the input produces 80% of the output. In real life, the distribution may not be 80/20, it could be 90/10 or 99/1, but 80/20 is seen as the optimum ratio.

Examples of this are everywhere but the real challenge is knowing how to best utilize the concept.

Tips on using the Pareto Principle in your work life

Productivity –  If you are like me and are most productive or energetic during the first 2 hours of the day, then shift projects with the most impact to that part of the day, don’t put off the important stuff until after lunch. This may mean not checking email or at least not responding to email during that time. It may mean that you move the routine or boring tasks to a later time so that your peak time has more impact. Adjust your lunch or breaks to make maximum use of your productive periods. Take advantage of your cyclical nature.

Diminishing Returns – There are many theories out there that that go something like this; “Since 20% of my employees produce 20% of the results, I should focus my precious management time on those performers and ignore the rest”. This assumes that your top performers can keep improving at a sustained rate and that may not be the case. Eventually they will top out performance wise and anyone can only do so much in a given situation. They may be working at near peak efficiency already and more management may not do anything at all, it may even hurt. Often, minimal effort and attention may produce large improvements in the bottom 80% of your staff. If the top 20 are already doing great, then make sure you have more people reaching that level. Effort vs. return may not be linear.

Meetings – Someone once told me that a meeting longer than 30 minutes is a waste of time. I tend to agree. I also think that spending 3 hours preparing for a 30 minute meeting is also a waste of time. Next time you have a meeting, either in person or virtually, try having it in 6 minutes. That’s right, 6 minutes. Except in rare occasions, this should be enough time to 1)define the problem or issue, 2) assign roles or task, and 3) schedule the next 6 min. meeting for follow up. If you are not able to do that in 6 minutes then maybe the project or topic is not fleshed out enough to waste the time of your co-workers. Meetings are time waste multipliers.

Phone Calls – I can most definitely assure you that 80% of the time you spend on the phone at work is wasted, unless it’s a personal call to your wife or kids. You know how I got my phone to ring 80% less? I started to respond to voicemails via email. This discourages the horrible habit of telephony. After all, phones are dirty, dirty things. Always dictate the terms when it comes to people using your time.

I am still grappling with the math behind this but I can see how this distribution can easily be applied to my own field which is SEO/SEM. Most everyone in SEO can tell you that the majority of traffic to a website comes from a minority of the keywords. The prevailing philosophy among many SEO’s is to chase the long-tail, or the 80% majority. This goes back to diminishing returns.

At any rate, I hope to explore the SEO side of this in a later post. Meanwhile, I would like to know where you have observed the Pareto Distribution in your day-to-day life.