If the Pareto principle is true, 64% of the effects come from 4% of the causes. And 51.2% of effects come from .8% of the causes!

In other words, I can get job half done by putting in less than 1% of the effort. Do you really believe that?

That’s exactly how I interpret the Pareto Principle and have found it very useful especially in my professional life.

It enabled me to eliminate some redtape in my organization just today.

But the concept behind it just says that sometimes very small changes in what you buy, how you spend your time, etc., can have big impacts.

In our home, we applied the 80/20 Rule once we found out that just one or two restaurant outings were costing us a huge percentage of our monthly food bill. Also, we use almost exactly 20% of our kitchen tools to make nearly all of the food we cook at home (in other words our kitchen items were more like 100/20 instead of 80/20), thinking about this helped us organize our kitchen better. As a result cooking at home became easier and less time-consuming.

The concept is really useful if you think flexibly about how to apply it.

Even if you live in a country where most people can afford to heat their homes now, I think the 80/20 ratio is often quoted when describing the proportion of the earth’s natural resources used by the richest 20 percent of the population – this isn’t a sustainable situation. Just because you can make the monthly mortgage payments on a large house (and we have seen in recent years that many people clearly can’t), doesn’t make buying one a well thought out decision.

A few/a lot of my classmates grew up in extremely large houses for our school district – greater than 3500 sq. ft for a family of maybe 5. I would say that few of them had ridiculous amounts of of stuff. Mostly the same stuff I had (in a nice 2300 sq. ft. house), but maybe “nicer versions”?

Snort.

People can have large homes because they have large families (more bedrooms/bathrooms), like to entertain (more dining room/den space), like to have out-of-town visitors often (again more bedrooms), like to have space for hobbies and other activities (game room, library), work from home (office), etc etc. Fer cryin’ out loud, it’s not always about more Stuff.

I’m going to try separating this out into sections.

First, addressing the article:

I’m not sure how useful it is in terms of frugality. 80% of your grocery bill may account for 20% of your items, but unless you identify what those items are and why they aren’t necessary, it’s just data.

And you say 80% of your clothing wearing is 20% of your item and your answer is to buy at thrift stores. But isn’t the real issue how much clothing you own that isn’t worn and the answer is to go through your closet and identify what is actually not worth keeping and selling/giving it away? Because just buying more clothes you won’t wear at thrift stores still doesn’t make sense.

If I spend 80% of my time/attention/money/etc. on one aspect of my life, the competing aspects still get the remaining 20%, not 0%. If I spend 80% of my time in the living room or bedroom I still need a bathroom, it just may be simply furnished and basic compared to the comfort and expense put into my living room.

I sure wish I knew where my clients would fall, either in the 80% or 20%, before they knew my price.

I may spend 80% of my time at home split between my bedroom and living room, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need a bathroom.

80% of my productivity (and enjoyment) at work comes from the 20% of my time I spend actually coding (I’m a programmer), but that doesn’t mean I can drop the documentation and presentation aspects of my job.

etc…