🥧 How to Use the 80/20 Rule

Hey there! Welcome back to The Flow by Flocus. And to the 3,430 new subscribers this week, hello and welcome 👋 If you’re new, you can catch up on our previous editions right here.

This week: It’s all about the 80/20 Rule — what it is, how it makes you more productive, and how to use it in your day-to-day life.

Also, we’re celebrating our one-year anniversary of The Flow 🥳 Thank you for making us a part of your productivity journey this past year! We’re excited to keep sharing tips to help you reach your goals.

Now, let’s get into it:

👀 What’s the 80/20 Rule?

Also called Pareto’s Principle, the 80/20 Rule states that 80% of your results come from 20% of what you do.

The 80/20 Rule started out as an economics concept, but it’s commonly applied to productivity.

Here are some other ways of looking at it:

• 20% of the tasks on your list drive 80% of the impact in your life

• 20% of your assignments account for 80% of your grade

• 20% of your products make up 80% of your revenue

Using the 80/20 Rule can help you work harder (and smarter) on what actually matters to you — and let go of the rest.

Scroll on to read our walkthrough on applying the 80/20 Rule to your personal and professional life!

🗓️ How To Use the 80/20 Rule Every Day

Your step-by-step guide on how to use the 80/20 Rule for organizing your daily tasks and priorities.

🏆 Step 1: List your top 3 desired results

What do you want to achieve today? Keep your list short and realistic — 3 things is perfect.

Here’s an example:

• Take care of my physical and mental health

• Work on a weak area of my studies

• Do something creative

📝 Step 2: Create your to-do list

Now that you know what you want to achieve today, feel free to start planning your tasks.

List everything you need (or want) to do today. Don’t worry about categorizing or prioritizing just yet — you’ll do that next. Instead, focus on capturing all your tasks.

If a task feels too big, break it down into smaller steps.

🔭 Step 3: Identify your high- and low-impact tasks

For each task on your list, indicate whether it’s:

• 🔥 High-impact — Directly drives a desired result, or includes an activity that fulfills you

• 🔻 Low-impact — Doesn’t directly drive a desired result, or consumes your energy and time without offering significant returns

Make your high-impact tasks stand out by highlighting them or marking them with a symbol or emoji.

🔬 Step 4: Review your low-impact tasks

For each of your low-impact tasks, ask yourself:

• Is there anyone I can delegate this task to?

• Is this task blocking anything else that’s important?

• Can I reschedule or eliminate this task?

From there, you can adjust your tasks accordingly.

💪 Step 5: Complete your high-impact tasks first

Now that you know which tasks will drive most of your meaningful results, do those first!

With your top 20% tasks done, you’ll have the rest of your day to focus on other things — from working through the less impactful stuff to relaxing after a productive day.

Doing the high-impact stuff first might not always be possible (especially if you don’t have total control over your schedule), which leads us to the next step.

🛠️ Step 6: Keep fine-tuning

As you continue to use the 80/20 Rule, you’ll get better at prioritizing your tasks and focusing on what drives the most impact, whether at work, school, home, or in your personal life.

And if you don’t achieve all 3 things on your list? That’s okay.

Listen to your brain and body, take as many breaks as you need, and keep your schedule as flexible as possible to account for any curveballs life may throw at you.

🪅 Flocus Picks

A curated list of things worth sharing.

• Summate (Tool) — Save up to 10 hours a week by getting automatic digests that summarize your newsletters!

• How to Prioritize Tasks Effectively (Video) — Learn how to declutter your never-ending task list in 3 minutes with this helpful video from Ways to Grow

• Boosting Productivity by Doing Less (Article) — Written by a student, this article includes tips on applying the 80/20 Rule to your studies and academic life.

🖥️ Flocus: Your All-in-One Dashboard

Tackle your high-impact tasks in Flocus — your personal productivity dash!

We’re constantly adding new features and improvements. This week, we shipped an update with lots of under-the-hood improvements to optimize performance, speed, and memory usage — giving you a smoother experience.

In case you missed it last week: we also made layout improvements for narrow windows (perfect for running your timer or tasks alongside other apps), added a skip break option for Pomodoro, introduced new timer alert sounds, and added a few new ambient sounds and themes for Flocus Plus members!

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Our example covered using the 80/20 Rule for daily tasks — but you can customize this approach however suits you best!

Try it for weekly or quarterly planning, or just to get a feel for how well your daily actions align with your desired outcomes.

Try out the 80/20 Rule this week, and hit reply to let us know how it works out for you!

Until next Sunday,

Flocus Team