Contents
Praise for The 80/20 Principle
The 80/20 Principle is the cornerstone of results-based living. Read this book and use it.
Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek
Time management is not about organizing your daily tasks, it is about organizing your essential daily tasks, and dumping the rest. Koch has made millions from thisa bestseller based on just one ideaproving that it works.
GQs 25 Best Business Books
The 80/20 Principle is terrific!
Al Ries, bestselling author of Focus and Positioning
Both astute and entertaining, this is an intriguing book to help people concentrate on not wasting their lives.
Professor Theodore Zeldin, St. Antonys College, Oxford University
We give this Dali-esque masterwork 5 starsa beautiful collage of well-written proseThis book is worth many times its price.
Weston Review, Tampa Bay, Florida
Although the author expresses a view on the likely future performance of certain investment instruments, this should not be taken as an incitement to deal in any of them, nor is it to be regarded as investment advice. Each individual should consider their investment position in relation to their own circumstances with the benefit of professional advice. No responsibility can be assumed by either the author or the publisher for investment or any other decision taken on the basis of views expressed in this book.
Copyright 1997, 1998, 2007, 2017 by Richard Koch
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Currency, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
crownpublishing.com
CURRENCY and its colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Nicholas Brealey Publishing, an imprint of John Murray Press, an Hachette UK Company, London, in 1997. First published in the United States by Currency Doubleday, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 1998. This revised and updated edition, originally published in the United Kingdom in 2017, is published in the United States by arrangement with Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Koch, Richard, 1950
The 80/20 principle: the secret to achieving more with less /
by Richard Koch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Time management. 2. Labor productivityPsychological aspects.
3. Industrial efficiencyPsychological aspects.
4. Conduct of life. I. Title.
HD69.T54K63 1998
650.1dc21 97-37959
CIP
ISBN9780385491747
Ebook ISBN9780385528313
Cover design by Rex Bonomelli
v5.2_r1
a
To Lee
For a very long time, the Pareto law [the 80/20 Principle] has lumbered the economic scene like an erratic block on the landscape: an empirical law which nobody can explain.
J OSEF S TEINDL
God plays dice with the Universe. But theyre loaded dice. And the main objective is to find out by what rules they were loaded and how we can use them for our own ends.
J OSEPH F ORD
We cannot be certain to what height the human species may aspireWe may therefore safely acquiesce in the pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race.
E DWARD G IBBON
CONTENTS
PREFACE TO THE EXPANDED AND UPDATED EDITION
The 80/20 Principle is marching onnot just this book, but the principle itself. In the past ten to twenty years, there have been incredibly significant changes in business, society, our personal lives, and in our understanding of how and why the 80/20 Principle operates. This has required a major addition to the book.
The principle has never been as ubiquitous or important as it is now. In the past, the principle gave those who used it a serious advantage. In the future it will be an essential tooland probably the essential toolfor anyone who wants to succeed or be happy.
So what has happened in the past few years? Briefly, three things:
Top-down and large organizations are giving wayat least in the ability to generate high growth, profits, and cashto networks, and to network ventures such as Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, eBay, and Betfair. These kinds of networks and network organizations are coming to dominate society and this is why 80/20 is becoming more prevalent.
All networks exhibit positive feedback loopsthe big get bigger, the rich get richer, the famous get more famous, and networks benefiting the world (such as network businesses and the philanthropic organizations they often spawn) and those not benefiting the world (such as drug gangs and ISIS) become wealthier and more powerful.
The new Chapter 17 says what networks and network businesses are, and why nobody in their right mindif they are ambitiouswould work for anything but a network or a network business.
The 80/20 pattern that we have come to recognize for over a centuryand which has been remarkably consistent, varying mainly between, say, 70/30 and 90/10is rapidly increasing to 90/10 and 99/1.
The new Chapter 18 describes how the lopsided distribution of causes and results is becoming more acute, as improbable events and rapid transformation of fortunes become more possible and influential.
There are a few rules of thumb that make all the difference between success and failure, between personal fulfillment and personal angst, and between happiness and misery. The new Chapter 19 describes five mega-rules to live by.
There is one more thing that I have discovered. The greatest manifestation of 80/20 was not included in the early editions of this book. A new Chapter 16 describes Your Hidden Friend, which can exert a super-potent and amazingly favorable influence on your life. The hidden friend operates at extraordinary speed and impact for no conscious effort at all. And properly trained, your hidden friend can transform your life. This requires a little effortthe trick is to know how to do the training, the coding, of your hidden friend. Chapter 16 describes how.
So there we have it. Four great new chapters. Go forth and shout the good news about the principle from the rooftops.
The 80/20 Principle has already sold more than a million copies in thirty-six languages. I dare to hope and expect that this new editionwhich I think is more valuablewill multiply that record.
For what has already been achieved, I am profoundly grateful to you, the readersthe beneficiaries, perhaps, but also the evangelists. I know from your messages and e-mails how mind-blowing so many of you are finding the principle. Long may it continue, and thank you all so much. I may have touched your lives, but you have certainly touched mine, and I am most grateful.
Richard Koch
Gibraltar, March 2017
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This has been the most painful and well-researched book I have ever written. There is a certain irony here, since the 80/20 Principle tells us that I could have obtained a book 80 percent as good in 20 percent of the time. This would certainly have been my inclination, and only the reader can tell whether the extra effort has been worthwhile. I think it has, but I have lost all objectivity.