Pareto Principle: Doing less on more projects increases your overall contribution

One of the most eye opening concepts I’ve encountered during my life is the Pareto Principle, also often referred to as the 80-20 rule. This mental model states that 80% of results are created through 20% of inputs.

It is named after the italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who demonstrated that 80% of italian land was owned by 20% of the population. When I was first made aware of the Pareto principle, I began to observe 80-20 interrelations everywhere.

• The top 20% of Americans own ca. 80% of american wealth
• 20% of bugs are responsible for 80% of crashes
• 20% of your clients are responsible for 80% of your revenue.

These linkages are prominent in SEO as well, for example: 20% of your keywords are responsible for 80% of your traffic and the minority of pages receive the majority of crawling requests.

So: The Pareto Principle tells us that the majority of results is driven by a minority of inputs. This consequence of this realization is that you should become a rigorous prioritizer. I am remorseless with the tasks I allow onto my to-do list. The obvious implication is that we must determine tasks with high business value and de-prioritize non-critical tasks. It also suggests that being a great planner with excellent prioritization is vastly more efficient than the workaholic who plans poorly and sits in the office on Saturday and Sunday as a result. As Abraham Lincoln put it: “If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.” I've written about proper preperation and contingency planning previously.

It’s important to note that the Pareto Principle is not a universal law and therefore not applicable to every scenario. It is an observation which underlines that input and output are very often in an asymmetric relationship. You will find scenarios where the relationship is not given if you go seeking them.

Determining the 20% heavy lifters

Questioning if the document or meeting you are preparing contributes to the magic 20% is a fantastic start and already puts you ahead of the curve. Easier said than done, right? In some industries you might be able to pinpoint exactly what these factors are - the majority of people do not have this luxury. I make the wrong judgment about the importance of topics all the time.

It is especially difficult in SEO, where you have industry specific ranking factors and a multitude of other components determining success. You will never have the certainty that a measure will have the predicted impact. You can take an educated guess with high certainty, but you never make a promise (don’t work with an SEO promising 100% guaranteed results). I consider the vast majority of SEO-checklists to be an outdated relic of the past (though I concede that they are a very advantageous tool for agencies in terms of scalability), but the 80-20 rule can really allow you to critically review your priorities communicated in these audits. Is an implementation of site-wide alt-tags really the lever you want to set in motion?

Assessing what the big needle movers are is the bread and butter of a product manager, and so difficult because we operate with very incomplete information and in highly dynamic environments. Breaking down a hypothesis into it's smallest, testable form is a true art.

Branching out into other projects to contribute more business value across the board

Let’s assume you found the high impact endeavors and had them successfully implemented. What now? Depending on your work situation it can be completely sensible (and may even be expected) to invest further efforts to tap into the remaining 20% of potential (requiring 80% of input). I myself have done a lot of 20% work, because these slim margins often are required to edge out competitors.

A question I was often asked in my inhouse role is how I manage to juggle many projects and still manage to deliver tangible improvements. My answer is always trying to concentrate my efforts and analyses on finding the magic 20% and doubling down on those problems, not becoming sidetracked or diverting attention with micro optimization "opportunities". I have written before on why focusing on the quality of arguments over their quantity is a great persuasive aid.

Hypothetically: A second project for you to work on presents itself, and encompasses the same business value as the one you are currently working on. If you manage to leverage the high impact tasks there, the total value you generate as an employee will be significantly higher than if you had continued to pursue lower impact tactics on the first project.

I also benefited from branching out into more teams greatly on a personal level: Contact with many teams gave me the opportunity to expose myself to new challenges and allowed me to grow my network inside the organization. This is the reason why I was - sometimes too eagerly - ready to pounce on new projects.

The reluctance to take on further work was definitely there. Overburdening yourself is a slippery slope. But often enough, time is not the barrier it appears to be. Enter Parkinson’s Law.

Parkinson's Law: Adapting your work to available time

Everyone has that colleague who is busy all of the time. I myself am booked pretty fully in a regular work week, as talking to people is a very central aspect of being a Product Manager.

A thing I noticed very early in my career in my first consulting gig is that I subconsciously adapt my workload to my available time like a chameleon. A scenario everyone can surely relate to: People can drag their feet on a deliverable but when external pressure/deadlines become acute these same people jump into vigorous action to deliver on time. You adapt your work to your available time like a rubber ball. If you have a week to prepare a presentation, you will take that week and polish and wax every element in that presentation over multiple days. I guarantee you that you would get the main substance of the presentation - you could say the 80% - done in 8 concentrated hours, if that was your time constraint.

I didn’t know it then, but this phenomenon is known as Parkinson’s Law. This is what Cyril Northcote Parkinson described in a famous article published in the Economist in 1955, where he observed flippantly that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. I combat this human tendency by focusing intently on the objective at hand, and not diverging into other, related issues (as so quickly happens when ample time is available). A little light, external pressure to put other people into action also never hurt anyone. But more importantly: People will be motivated to act faster if they understand the underlying vision and impact of a task. Making this transparent is one of the sacred duties of a product manager.

Putting the two together

The Pareto Principle and Parkinson’s Law offer great insight individually. But what am I trying to get at? Tackling a greater range of work, and finding the high value levers in the individual projects can be a boon for your total value contribution to the organization. Though willingly entering more commitments can seem daunting, humans have an excellent tendency to adapt to their workload, as Parkinson's Law illuminates. Apart from garnering more experiences in different fields, your work becomes more visible and you truly develop a good work ethic and sharpen the art of prioritization. After all, our time is the most valuable asset in the world.