How to Prepare Effective Task Plans
Vilfredo Pareto 20/80 Rule (alias Pareto 20/80 Principle) and Dwight D. Eisenhower Matrix (alias Eisenhower Matrix) will be used to illustrate how to prepare an “Effective Task Plan” to achieve effective time management and ultimately high productivity. Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist and sociologist while Dwight D. Eisenhower was a Five Star General and 34th President of the United States of America.
The Pareto 20/80 Principle is a problem solving toolkit.
The Pareto 20/80 Principle states that in many situations, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Conversely, 20% of consequences come from 80% of causes (https://en.wikipedia.org/). This can be interpreted as 80% of great results are achieved from 20% of great efforts put into completing the right actions required to accomplish specific goals and objectives in any situation.
Therefore, applying the Pareto 20/80 principle in solving time management problems, the individual needs to consider the following factors:
- Set goals and objectives to be achieved for the day and prepare a To-Do-Task-List and timeline for achieving them.
- Focus in identifying and executing 20% of the important tasks, efforts and other resources required to produce the most value or impact to achieving 80% of the goals and objectives.
- Ignore 80% of the unimportant tasks that produce only 20% of outcomes
The Pareto 20/80 principle has been described in the diagram below:
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How can one identify the important tasks that produce the most value or impactful results from a mass of To-Do-Task-List?