Why can’t we make more use of the 80/20 rule? I’ll review what the 80/20 rule is, explain how it can be powerful, then give four reasons why we don’t take advantage of it.What is the 80/20 rule?The 80/20 rule is amazing when you first learn about it. It says that efforts and results are often very unevenly distributed. You’ll get 80% of your results from the first 20% of your efforts. For example, maybe your top 20% of customers will provide 80% of your profit. Or when you’re debugging software, often 80% of the bugs will be in 20% of the code. Once you becom...

Everybody talks about mastering the art of staying productive. Not many people willingly accept that such efforts are futile. It’s impossible to stay productive 100% of the time, and this will never change.Something that I believe to be just as important, if not more so, is what we make of our least productive time. We all have the capacity to be extremely productive for some part of the day. Even the world’s grandest underachievers. But I believe that to be successful running your own business, to steal a cricket metaphor, your tail has to wag. You have to find a way to maximise...