- 1 min read

It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways

“The road to hell is paved with the pursuit of volume. Volume leads to marginal products, marginal customers, and greatly increased managerial complexity…Hard work leads to low returns. Insight and doing what we want leads to high returns….Strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many…It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways…The 80/20 principle says that if we doubled our time on the top 20 percent of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 percent more than now.” — Richard Koch

So much to unpack here:

80% of the value that your business (or you) creates derive from a mere 20% of the work that you do
A significant portion of the remaining 80% are often mundane/menial tasks that neither generates value nor inspires you
This gels with current research that around 60% of jobs have at least 30% of activities that are automatable
That’s not even taking into consideration the rapid advancements in AI which is upending traditional assumptions about work
In today’s age of efficiency, if you are not already incorporating automation and AI into your productivity stack, you will be overtaken by your peers who do
The trick is to systemize and automate what is repeatable so you can innovate what isn’t
To succeed requires a fundamental mindset, not just blindly adopting the latest technology