I Doubled My Impact With These Prioritization Hacks

The Pareto Principle, SMART Goals, and Occam’s Razor.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

It’s the second day of the new year and my work plate, like my Christmas dinner, is beyond full already.

Classic prioritization theory has three tried-and-tested techniques to maximize efficiency: LIFO, FIFO, and Due Date.

Whilst these continue to be useful to prioritize most deliverables, I halve my effort and double my impact when I use these alternative hacks instead.

The Pareto Principle

Simply put, it’s the 80/20 rule.

80% of the consequences are generally due to 20% of the causes. Generally speaking:

80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your customers.

80% of crimes are committed by 20% of criminals.

20% of drivers cause 80% of accidents.

20% of the population owns 80% of the assets.

80% of my blog views come from 20% of my subscribers.

80% of my workload stems from 20% of my deliverables.

My priority is to identify and execute the deliverables that have the highest impact, thus bringing down my workload. There is limited benefit to slogging…