The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More With Less (25 page)

IS A TIME REVOLUTION FEASIBLE?

Many of you may feel that much of my advice is rather revolutionary and pie in the sky for your circumstances. Comments and criticisms that have been made to me include the following:

• I can’t choose how to spend my time. My bosses won’t allow it.

• I would need to change jobs to follow your advice and I can’t afford the risk.

• This advice is all very well for the rich, but I just don’t have that degree of freedom.

• I’d have to divorce my spouse!

• My ambition is to improve my effectiveness 25 percent, not 250 percent. I just don’t believe the latter can be done.

• If it were as easy as you say, everyone would do it.

If you find yourself saying any of these things, time revolution may not be for you.

Don’t start a time revolution unless you are willing to be a revolutionary

I could encapsulate (or at least caricature) these responses as follows: “I’m not a radical, let alone a revolutionary, so leave me alone. I’m basically happy with my existing horizons.” Fair enough. Revolution is revolution. It is uncomfortable, wrenching, and dangerous. Before you start a revolution, realize that it will involve major risks and will lead you into uncharted territory.

Those who want a time revolution need to link together their past, present, and future, as suggested above by Figure 35. Behind the issue of how we allocate time lurks the even more fundamental issue of what we want to get out of our lives.

11

YOU CAN ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

Things that matter most Must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.

J
OHANN
W
OLFGANG VON
G
OETHE

Work out what you want from life. In the 1980s phrase, aim to “have it all.” Everything you want should be yours: the type of work you want; the relationships you need; the social, mental, and aesthetic stimulation that will make you happy and fulfilled; the money you require for the lifestyle that is appropriate to you; and any requirement that you may (or may not) have for achievement or service to others. If you don’t aim for it all, you’ll never get it all. To aim for it requires that you know what you want.

Most of us don’t work out what we want. And most of us end up with lopsided lives as a result. We may get work right and relationships wrong or the other way round. We may strive after money or achievement, but find after we achieve our goal that the victory is hollow.

The 80/20 Principle records this sorry state. Twenty percent of what we do leads to 80 percent of the results; but 80 percent of what we do leads to only 20 percent. We are wasting 80 percent of our effort on low-value outcomes. Twenty percent of our time leads to 80 percent of what we value; 80 percent of our time disappears on things that have little value to us. Twenty percent of our time leads to 80 percent of happiness; but 80 percent of our time yields very little happiness.

But the 80/20 Principle does not always apply and need not apply. It is there as a diagnostic, to point out an unsatisfactory and wasteful state of affairs. We should aim to frustrate the 80/20 Principle or at least translate it to a higher plane where we can be much happier and more effective. Remember the promise of the 80/20 Principle: if we take note of what it tells us, we can work less, earn more, enjoy more, and achieve more.

To do this, we must start with a rounded view of everything we want. That is what this chapter deals with. Chapters 12, 13, and 14 then deal in more detail with some of the components—with relationships, careers, and money respectively—before we revert in Chapter 15 to the ultimate goal: happiness.

START WITH LIFESTYLE

Do you enjoy your life? Not part of it, but most of it: at least 80 percent of it? And whether you do or not, is there a lifestyle that could suit you better? Ask yourself:

• Am I living with the right person or people?

• Am I living in the right place?

• Am I working the right hours and do they match my ideal work/play rhythm, and suit my family and social needs?

• Do I feel in control?

• Can I exercise or meditate when I want?

• Am I nearly always relaxed and comfortable with my surroundings?

• Does my lifestyle make it easy for me to be creative and fulfill my potential?

• Do I have enough money and are my affairs organized so that I don’t have to worry about them?

• Does the lifestyle facilitate whatever contribution I want to make to enriching the lives of people I want to help?

• Do I see my close friends enough?

• Is the extent of travel in my life just right, not too much, or too little?

• Is the lifestyle right for my partner and family too?

• Do I have everything that I need right here: do I have it all?

WHAT ABOUT WORK?

Work is a key part of life, one which should be neither overdone nor underdone. Almost everyone needs to work, whether it is paid or not. Almost no one should allow work to take over their lives, however much they claim to enjoy it. Hours of work should not be dictated by social convention. The 80/20 Principle can provide a good measure here and a good way to say whether you should work more or less. It is the idea of arbitrage: if on average you are happier outside work than at work, you should work less and/or change your job. If you are on average happier at work than outside work, you should work more and/or change your nonwork life. You haven’t got it right until you are equally happy at work and outside work, and until you are happy at least 80 percent of the time at work and 80 percent of the time outside work.

Career alienation

Many people don’t like their work much. They don’t feel it’s them. But they feel that they “must” do it because it provides their livelihood. You may also know people who, while it would be wrong to say that they dislike their jobs, still have an ambivalent view of them: sometimes, or some parts, they enjoy; on other occasions, or other parts, they definitely do not. Many, perhaps most, of the people you know would rather be doing something else, if they could be paid the same for doing that as for their current job.

Career is not a separate box

The career that you and/or your partner pursue should be viewed in terms of the total quality of the life implied by that career: where you live, the time you spend together and with friends, and the satisfaction that you get from actually working, as well as whether your after-tax incomes can support that lifestyle.

You probably have more choices than you think. Your present career may be the right one and you can use it as a benchmark. But think creatively about whether you might not prefer a different career and lifestyle. Construct various different options for your current and future lifestyle.

Start from the premise that there does not have to be any conflict between your work life and the things you enjoy outside work. “Work” can be many things, especially as leisure industries now make up a large slice of the economy. You may be able to work in an area that is your hobby or even turn your hobby into a business. Remember that enthusiasm can lead to success. It is often easier to make an enthusiasm into a career than to become enthusiastic about a career dictated by others.

Whatever you do, be clear about the optimum point you are trying to reach and view it within your life’s total context. This is easier said than done: old habits die hard and the importance of lifestyle is easily relegated to the demands of conventional career thinking.

For instance, when two colleagues and I set up our own management consulting business in 1983, we were aware of the negative effects on our lives of the long hours and extensive traveling previously required by our bosses. So we decided that we would institute a “total lifestyle approach” in our new business and stress the quality of life as much as the earnings. But when work started flooding in, we ended up working the usual 80-hour week, and, what was worse, we required our professional staff to do the same (I couldn’t understand, at first, what he meant when an anguished consultant accused me and my partners of “ruining people’s lives”). In the pursuit of money, the total lifestyle approach had quickly gone out of the window.

Which type of career will make you happiest?

Am I advocating here that you “drop out” of the rat race? Not necessarily. It may be that you will be happiest in the rat race; perhaps, like me, you are basically a rat.

You should certainly be clear about what you enjoy doing and try to include this in your career. But “what” you do is only one element in the equation. You also need to consider the work context within which you should operate and the importance to you of professional achievement. These may be at least as important in determining your professional happiness.

You should be clear where you stand on two dimensions:

• Do you have a high drive for achievement and career success?

• Would you be happiest working for an organization, as a self-employed and self-contained individual (a “sole trader”), or employing other people?

Figure 36 shows this choice. Which box describes you best?

Figure 36 Desired career and lifestyle

Box 1 people are highly ambitious but prefer to work in a context organized and provided by others. The archetypal “organization man” (and woman) of the twentieth century falls in this box. The number of these roles is falling, as large organizations employ fewer people and also as large organizations lose market share to smaller ones (the former trend will continue, the latter may not). But if the supply of these posts is falling, so too is the demand for them. If you want this type of role, you should recognize the fact and pursue your ambition, however unfashionable it may become. Large organizations still provide structure and status even if they can no longer provide security.

Box 2 people are typically professionals who have a drive for recognition by their peers or who want to be the best in their field. They want to be independent and do not fit well into organizations, unless the latter (like most universities) are extremely permissive. These people should ensure that they become self-employed as quickly as possible. Once they are, they should resist the temptation to employ other people, even if this offers high financial rewards. Box 2 people are sole traders, who want to avoid professional dependence on others as far as possible.

Box 3 people have high drive and ambition, hate being employed but do not want the lonely life of the sole trader. They may be unconventional, but they are builders: they want to build a web or a structure around themselves. They are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.

Bill Gates, one of the two richest men in America, was a college dropout who was obsessed with personal computer software. But Bill Gates is not a sole trader. He needs to have other people, large numbers of them, working for him. Many people are like this. The ideology of empowerment has obscured this need and made the desire to build businesses slightly unfashionable. If you want to work with other people, but not for them, you are a Box 3 person. You had better recognize this fact and do something about it. Many frustrated professionals are Box 3 people who like what they do but are operating in Box 1 or 2. They do not recognize that the source of their frustration is not professional but organizational.

Box 4 people do not have a high drive for career achievement but do enjoy working with others. They should ensure that they spend many hours a week doing so, either in a conventional job or in a voluntary role.

Box 5 people are not ambitious but do have a strong desire for autonomy in their work. Rather than set up their own firm, the best role for Box 5 people is as freelancers, working on particular projects for other firms to suit their own convenience.

Box 6 people are individuals whose need for career achievement is low but who enjoy the process of organizing and developing others. Many teachers, social workers, and charity workers are Box 6 people and are well suited to their roles. For Box 6 people the journey is everything; there is no need to arrive.