I learned about the 80/20 rule in Tyler Perry’s new movie Why Did I Get Married? It makes perfect sense and so I want to blog about this rule today.

In the movie the men are talking about why two of the men cheated on their wives. The men who don’t cheat gave the reminder that they needed to remember the 80/20 rule. So here it is in a nutshell for you.

If you are married, you are probably getting about 80% of your needs met. The other 20% don’t get met for whatever reason. You’re tired, he’s tired, kids, too much work the possibilities are endless but that 20% seems like a big gap.

Suddenly a person comes around and begins to give you that 20% of the attention that you needed and it FEELS GOOD! That 20% was missed so much that you are just enthralled with that 20%. You can’t get enough of the 20%. What happens though is that you begin to neglect the person who is giving you 80% and therefore risking losing 80%. In the end it comes down to a simple math equation. You lose 80% to gain 20% and you lose more than you gain. It doesn’t seem worth it doesn’t it?

Now, apply the 80/20 rule to the rest of your life. In sales, 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your sales staff. In ministry 80% of your problems will be caused by 20% of your members. In life 80% of your time can be consumed by the 20% of those things we think of as fires.

It’s time to do some backward thinking here. Let’s begin to make the equation more like 20/80. To cause the 80/20 rule to work in reverse make it so that 20% of your time can be used to do 80% of your workload! It’s called working smarter and I know you can do it!