Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone enjoyed their time off and took time to truly enjoy some family time with their loved ones. This is always a good time of year to reflect on all the blessings we have been given that make our lives so special. It is also a good time to reflect on a number of things we set out to do in 2013 that we did not accomplish to get a sense of why and then create a plan to make sure that this doesn't happen in 2014. One concept that has paid tremendous dividends to me when I am beginning to evaluate how to make a complete change to take my abilities and level of success to "another level" is to apply the Pareto Principle to my life. The Pareto Principle is an ingenious discovery by Vilfredo Pareto in 1906 in which he observed that 80% of Italy's wealth was owned by 20% of the population. What this basically led to was a discovery that in many things in life, 80% of our ROI is usually associated with 20% of our actions. By applying this principle to our lives, there are several truths that come to the forefront that should allow us to improve the quality of our lives if we accept them and take actions to adjust accordingly.
80 percent of your headaches come from 20 percent of the people in your life.
This is one that is very dear to me because I am very much the type of person who believes you should only have positive people in your life. There are those individuals who are only energy-takers and never energy-givers. It seems their whole point in life is to find the negative in everything and then to make everyone see it as well. You should eliminate, or at least marginalize, these people's influence on your life. You can do this by simply eliminating the amount of time you spend with these individuals or removing them from your life all together. In relation to situations in which you cannot completely stop all interactions with this person (i.e. work), you can attempt to discuss these differences and see if you can come to any resolution to improve your relationship. If not, you may want to see if you can move to a different department or group if possible. If that still doesn't work, you can just try to eliminate the amount of time you must interact with this person or, as a last resort, look for a new job all together.
80 percent of your income comes from 20 percent of your activities
If you are in sales (like me), you definitely get a sense of why this principle is true. Often, we spend our entire day doing a number of different activities, from documentation to reporting to follow-up. What we realize, however, is that there are really only a handful of things that actually put money into our bank accounts. For sales, it is often prospecting and spending time in front of the customer that ultimately makes the most difference in relation to success. This can be the same with any job, however, if you break it down to what are the 2-3 activities that you must be really good at and do almost every day that will have the greatest impact on the benefit you are able to deliver to your company. If you are a teacher, perhaps it is teaching the best lesson by staying as focused and "in the moment" as possible with your students. If you are a chemical engineer, perhaps it is consistently iterating your design and approach to the development of new chemicals that produces the greatest benefits to your company's bottom line. Whatever it is, identify it and do your best to maximize the amount of focus and time you are able to put into that particular area of your work for greater success.
80 percent of your LACK of success comes from 20 percent of your choices.
Anyone who has ever experienced marginal success in life but can't quite get over that hump is familiar with this aspect of life. Often, the marginally successful do a lot of things right in relation to how they approach their day and focus on accomplishing various tasks. There is, however, one or two things that this person is doing incorrectly, or not at all, that is holding back the super success that is on the horizon. One has to consistently review the different vices once has in her or her life and try to eliminate them all if possible. It can seem like a very small thing when your one vice may be your mom's sweet potato pie, but that small thing could be a huge deterrent to your goal of losing 20 lbs if you're eating sweet potato pie each week. Consistently identify those things in your life that when you do them, there is something in the back of your head is telling you that it isn't "right." Fight to remove those things from your life and discipline yourself to overcome those temptations and you'll be surprise at the 80 percent improvement you might see as a result of it.
While we learned in grade school that 1=1 and 2=2, it appears that as we mature in life and math (i.e. calculus), these truths seemingly aren't as set in stone as we once thought. As you look at your life in 2014, take time to identify that 20 percent of your life that is holding back the 80 percent of your success. This could be those individuals who only bring you down and bring nothing positive to the table, that small number of things that you are NOT doing, or that small group of vices that you know you should eliminate from your life. Whatever it is, identify it TODAY and begin working to make sure that you don't allow ANYTHING (or ANYONE) hold you back in 2014!
Ken Middleton is an Account Manager at TEKsystems that specializes in IT staffing and services. He is a graduate of UNC-Pembroke and current MBA student at Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech.
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