Living the 80 20 way free ebook

When we focus our self, we give up doing what many other people do, thinking what others think. Is this a loss? Of quantity, yes; but not of quality. In quality, less is more.

By narrowing our interests, we deepen and intensify them. By focusing on our best, unique attributes, we become more individual, more human. We focus our power, our singularity, and our ability to enjoy life profoundly and uniquely. Developing individuality is a conscious process. We become more distinctive individuals through deliberate decisions and actions, honing and increasing what is different and best about us. Focus and individuality make life easier Many people meander through life, muddling along without great hope or direction.

They think this is the easiest way. But is it? Are they short-changing themselves? In being true to your self, you give up the parts of you that are not genuine or natural. You stop acting. You stop pretending to be interested or excited in things that bore you. You stop worrying about what other people think of you.

What could be easier? More rewarding? What could electrify your life more? The modern world overloads us. We try to keep up with so many things.

We make zillions of little decisions. How much simpler to make a few big decisions! For what? At what? All of these decisions exclude. They simplify life, close off options, eliminate excess choice. They concentrate energy. What are you putting energy into? Is your personal power focused? Use these people as a sounding board - most of us need assistance from others before we discover what is best for us. Focus decreases doubt and turbo-charges confidence and power. As Shakespeare wrote in Measure for Measure: Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.

We all have a tremendous, underused asset: our sub-conscious mind and emotions. The subconscious is a friendly and truly personal computer.

Like the personal computer itself, the subconscious delivers much more with much less energy and cost. How many times have you been walking the dog, brushing your teeth, meditating, or sitting in a deckchair, when suddenly - Wham!

The subconscious was, delivering the answer you needed. The subconscious is selective. When you care deeply about an issue, it takes note. Focus and individuality make us happy Happiness is not outside us. Happiness is inside. Our minds and our emotions, and what we think of ourselves, make us happy or unhappy. We are happy if we have high self- respect and self-esteem. Self-esteem can be temporarily boosted by drugs or drink, flattery, power, money, or by deceiving ourselves.

Yet the reliable, lasting way to high self-esteem is by nurturing the best of our selves. A positive and accurate self-image is based on individuality: an authentic sense of who we are and why we live life our way. Lasting happiness cannot be gained through consumption. Happiness requires active participation in what we value. To do things well, enjoy them, and take pride in what we have done - these fertilize happiness; they demand development and individuality.

Reaching for the best only in the areas that suit you is more fun than bother. Getting the best becomes relatively easy. Somerset Maugham Creative emotions possess and delight us. They come from caring, attention, focus, consistent dreaming, from passionately wanting to create. To dance well, love well, raise children well, play golf well, cook well, ask questions well, direct a movie well - inspired actions make us happy.

Individuality and focus make us happy. The kind of place you want to be - the people you want to be with, the kind of person you want to become, the experiences you want to have, the quality of your life. Where you most care about arriving - the life that suits and expresses you. Using the law of focus, that less is more, you need to think very carefully about the particular, personal destination that is best for you.

What are the few vital characteristics or results that will make us happiest? What are the very few qualities that we must focus on and multiply, not worrying about all the rest? If you are exceptionally selective and find the few things that matter deeply to you, life acquires a purpose and meaning way beyond what it had previously, when you were somewhat concerned about a large number of issues.

So who and what do you want to become? If you strip away all the acting and all the role- related trappings, who is the authentic you? What is your best 20 percent? A good way to answer this question is to define your 20 percent spikes.

Use Figures 7 and 8 pp. Put dots where you think they belong for each attribute and then join the lines up. I am committed to Tracy for life and to our children. I want them to grow up loved and to lead happy lives. Besides creating and building a new restaurant, I enjoy leading and training people so that they become the best they can be in their jobs.

Do you? If so, you can make less more. Is it unique to you? Will you avoid squandering energy on many other things? Does it exclude lots of objectives that currently soak up a large part of your energy? Is it a dream life for you? But most importantly: Will pursuing it prove that less is more for you? Knowing what you want, how can you make a large improvement in your life while doing less overall? All we have to do is to find it. How did they manage it?

Pick one that suits you particularly well. Think hitchhiking- who can give you a lift? Does it give you not only a better solution, but also an easier one? You live in East London, close to a tube subway stop. Looking at the tube map, you plan to go directly from your local station on the Central Line to Notting Hill Gate, then change to the Circle Line for Paddington. All fine and dandy. Try this. Leave the tube at Lancaster Gate station, two stops before Notting Hill Gate, and take a relaxed walk to Paddington, occupying no more than five minutes.

Altogether you save yourself four stations traveling on the tube, as well as the hassle of changing from one line to another and waiting for a new train. More with less. The road to Seville starts with 30 miles of hairpin bends through a mountain pass to Ronda, then there are many changes of direction and the route is hard to follow.

There is no other way to Seville that is anywhere near as short or direct. You grimly set off. Even though it would take a few precious extra minutes, you study the map carefully, and ask the cashier at the service station for help.

She tells you that for the price of a small toll, you can take the freeway to Malaga, then another freeway to Seville. How long will it take? Two hours, she says, if you drive fast. Is it clearly marked? You find she is right: the freeway is clearly marked and almost completely empty; the Spanish hate paying tolls.

Be clear, however, about your objectives before deciding the route. In the Seville example, the best route would be different if you had plenty of time, enjoyed driving on challenging roads, and placed a premium on beautiful scenery.

This is typical of life lived to the full. Of course, my travel examples are rather trivial. This is certainly the case for finding the route to your best 20 percent. How do we do this? Back to Steve.

It won the best Cape Town restaurant competition last year and everyone agrees it is a cool place. But I want to have a chain of these restaurants in South Africa and then overseas. The first step is to open in Johannesburg. There are always many possible routes. The challenge is to craft a route offering more for less. First, how could you get more? What would be a much better way for you? Brainstorm all possible routes.

Dream up many ideas. If it fails, move on to your second choice of route - but only if it too offers more with less. The things that you are best at, that come naturally to you, will give clues on how you can best get more with less. I just about managed to resign before I got fired. Having failed the first time round, with a huge dent to my ego, I determined to correct the things that had sunk me before: my lazy style, independence of spirit, irreverence, and reputation for frivolity.

I decided to make a big deal of working unbelievably hard, brownnosing my bosses, and presenting the serious and responsible side of my nature. I would not fail again and I would prove the folks at BCG wrong in their judgment of me. Was this the right thing to do? Yes and no. Bain was a fine choice. It had a great business formula, exclusively focused on serving the top person in any client organization, and grew even faster than BCG.

Talent was so thin on the ground in Bain that I rapidly got promoted to junior partner. I reined in my rebel instincts, projecting a convincing image of company loyalist and team builder.

Clearly not. In donning my Bain mask, I was seeking more with more. More success, more interesting work, more responsibility, more money. For someone who believed in more with less, this was far from ideal. What about my 20 percent spikes? Was I playing properly to these?

Alas, no. Not really. I was not straitlaced or loyal enough. Was I finding it a strain to appear so Bain-like? You bet. My first thought was that I had enough money and should take life easier, get out of management consulting altogether. That would be less with less: less work, less strain and stress, but also less money and less interesting work.

Besides, I professed to believe in more with less. So how was I going to contrive more with less? What did I want? I wanted less angst, less conformity, less suppression of my true nature, less travel, less intense work, fewer administrative duties, and fewer bosses preferably none at all!

To state my desires was to answer them. The only way I could get more with less, the exact way I wanted it, was to start my own firm. I firmly believe that the most ambitious destination and route can also be the easiest - if and only if they precisely match your strengths. Correcting our weaknesses, the most we become is mediocre. If we hone our few super- strengths, our 20 percent spikes, insist on behavior that is authentic and true to our inner selves, and unreasonably demand more with less, the sky is the limit.

There were only two actions necessary: to find the partners, and then start the firm! Once I had made my decision, all the other actions I was taking every day became the trivial many; finding the partners and starting the firm became the vital few.

Then chance intervened. I called Ian Fisher, a colleague and friend, about our current project, and at the end of the call he let something slip.

I jumped on my bicycle and rode along the Thames towpath to his home in Kew. I found them holed up together, shell-shocked after a traumatic encounter with Bill Bain. Were they going to start a new firm? Could I be their partner? Or had it? But the key phrase is when you know your destiny. Desire does have to be preplanned. If you do take them, they can multiply happiness out of all proportion to the effort. Make the most of your difference. Nobody else can.

Focus on the best of yourself, so that less is more. Find the route to transform your life, so you get more results with less worry and less effort. Then act, and be open to the great luck that the universe will try to bestow on you. Mia Farrow is sitting in the audience, watching her favorite film. He snatches Mia Farrow off, unleashing a fabulous love affair. There, I think, lies the secret of success. I mean having an idea, or a fantasy, or a passion - and acting on it.

Stepping out of a life of duty, where everything runs on predictable lines dictated by other people, into a life created by your own imagination. Forgetting about hard work and using the greatest of all human attributes, our ability to move between the world as it is and the world in our minds.

Thinking, imagining, creating, enjoying. Other animals can work hard, only humans can think hard. Other animals are programmed by evolution. People are too, but we can also program ourselves and change the world we find into a world we prefer. The whole edifice of modern civilization rests not on drudgery, muscle power, repetition, or long hours of work, but on insight, inspiration, inventiveness, originality, and enterprise.

On moving between where we are now, in the real world, and the world we dream up in our minds and then make real. What is true for humanity as a whole is also true for individuals. The most successful people change the world not through sweat and tears but through ideas and passion.

It is not a matter of hard work or time on the job; it is having a different view, an original idea, something that expresses their individuality and creativity. Success comes from thinking, then acting on those thoughts. So if you believe you have to work hard and do unpleasant things to be successful, think again. What about media moguls Oprah Winfrey and Rupert Murdoch?

Devotion to hard slog or great new ideas? What about Ronald Reagan? John F Kennedy? Winston Churchill? Albert Einstein? Charles Darwin? William Shakespeare?

Christopher Columbus? Jesus Christ? What they all did was to spend time on what mattered to them, on a few essentials where they exerted leadership, and little or no time on the mass of trivia occupying their hard-working contemporaries.

There is the difficult way to success and there is the easier way. Sacrifice a pleasant life now in the hope of a much more pleasant future life. Try to do extraordinary things, at extraordinary cost, to get extraordinary results. Make a great mental leap: dissociate effort from reward. Focus on the outcomes that you want and find the easiest way to them with least effort, least sacrifice, and most pleasure.

Concentrate on what produces extraordinary results without extraordinary effort. Be efficient but relaxed. First, think results. What gives us the 80 percent outcome for 20 percent effort - or the percent outcome for percent effort? Fewer than 20 percent of people commandeer 80 percent of the goodies. In your area, who are they? What do they do differently? What are these few vital activities? What are the really valuable things that you do so much better than other people?

You shine at specific times, in particular ways, with certain people. What behavior has results out of all proportion to energy? First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm. Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working, stupid ones.

These people are a menace, and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office. Do you lack smarts or lack laziness? If you are smart, but not lazy, work on laziness.

To do everything, simply because you can, lowers effectiveness. Concentrate on the really important things that get amazing results.

Do only the few things with greatest benefit. Far better to spend twice as much time on the magic 20 percent, and far less on the rest. Bottom line: 60 percent more results for 60 percent less energy. Stop inessential things. Force ourselves to do less. Win time to find more vital areas to work on and more effective things to do. And there are super-hard workers, like President Carter, who had too many objectives and failed frenetically.

Still, there are excellent scientists or artists, obsessed with their work, who love it. A lazy person wants to do as little as possible and so concentrates only on the essentials. Thinking is often disturbing, sometimes even frightening. Burying ourselves in trivia is less threatening.

I can see six common characteristics: The stars are ambitious No surprise here. Yet their ambition is sweet and unforced. Because… The stars love what they do Ronald Reagan had the time of his life as Governor of California and over eight White House years. Top authors adore writing in exotic locations. High flyers are vibrant, full of life, overflowing with quiet pleasure or infectious exuberance.

Researcher Srully Blotnick investigated self-made millionaires. He discovered that they loved their work. Their passion took them to the top. Enjoyment, not effort or education, is the key to success.

Picture millions slaving on the educational treadmill. Or working in dark Satanic towers for pinch-mouthed bosses and mean-spirited corporations. Could they all be barking up the wrong tree? Throw off your chains. Find something you love doing. Most successful entrepreneurs had no university education, usually no further education at all.

More than half left school as soon as they could. It was enthusiasm that made them. It can make you too. They found something they loved doing, where they could create something that other people wanted. You can do the same. Is there something you love doing that could become your business or profession? The stars are lopsided Stars are not all-rounders.

The top people have massive strengths - and equally massive downsides. What leads to extraordinary results is concentration on the strengths, honing these to Olympian standards.

Where you work - the profession, firm, department, job - is crucial. If 20 percent of potential jobs and professions yield 80 percent of the potential benefit, seek jobs where your lopsided strength comes to the fore. Balance is mediocrity. The stars know a lot about a little Have you been told to gain broad experience?

Focus all your energy on one area. Become expert on a narrow front. Know 99 percent about 1 percent of something. Meet all the experts. See how they work, what kind of lives they lead. Mimic them. The stars think and communicate clearly They sell and market themselves concisely. How can you learn this? Do a stint as a salesperson. Selling is tough. It invites rejection. It also teaches you how to accept rejection, get on with different folks, communicate, and negotiate effectively.

Sell anything - autos, hi-fis, computers, advertising space, magazine subscriptions, anything at all - for a few months. The rest of your life will be so much easier and more successful! The stars evolve their own success formula Does your favorite comedian have a unique formula?

Is it timing, tone of voice, material used, or something else distinctive? Neither need you. Observe many formulae. Adapt or combine them or invent your own. See what delivers more with less. What does it mean to you? What would be ideal? What are the few things you care most about? Below are many different things that might be important about your job. What really matters to me about my work?

The bottom three bullets are left blank for you to fill in anything else you want. Now, remembering the need to focus and that less is more, pick the one, two, or three points - ideally just one point - that matter s most to your happiness. What is really strange is that many talented people pursue jobs and careers that do not make them and their families happy - or as happy as a different job and career could.

Of my good friends, I figure at least half have not chosen the career path that would make them happiest. They put success and money ahead of enjoyment, fulfillment, and purpose. Most of them have made good money. Did the extra happiness from money and status outweigh the extra happiness they would have derived from more fulfilling work?

I doubt it. Dividing my friends into those who chose the jobs they loved on the one hand, and those who worked for money and success on the other, it is the former group who have made, on average, more money. Those who worked for fun and fulfillment rather than money also tended to make more money. Work is more fun than fun. Noel Coward said that. Now hard evidence backs him up. He says that Americans derive much more flow from work than from leisure time.

Flow derives from a sense of personal mastery and active achievement. Work that is matched to our strengths - that leads to clear and positive results - gives enormous satisfaction. Success is not, and should not be seen as, a desperate process of piling up wealth and conspicuous consumption of material goods in order to impress other people. This is a game which nobody - except perhaps Bill Gates for a limited time - can win. In success as in everything else, less is more.

Quality is more valuable than quantity, giving is more satisfying than consuming, abundant time trumps abundant goods, serenity is better than striving, and love given generates love received. What we all want deep down is abundant time, security, affection, peace, tranquility, spiritual awareness, self- confidence, and a sense that we are expressing ourselves and creating things of great value to other people.

True success is being able to spend our time how we like, fulfilling our unique talent, being valuable to people we value, and being loved. Maybe you can simply change the way you do it. My barber and my tennis coach tell me about their lives and ask me about mine; I get free therapy with every haircut and tennis lesson!

They enjoy their work more this way. My mother, who used to be a nurse, was just in hospital for a week. She remarked how much more nurses today chat to the patients and their families, involving them in restoring the patient to health. Could you do something to add meaning and value to your job? Not everyone agrees that they can enjoy their work. My friend Bruce complains about his work.

All the permanent jobs are being replaced by contracts and casual positions. The idea of having a career I love is just a pipe dream.

Nobody stopped to ask whether they could enjoy it. But today millions of people revel in their work. And the more they love it, the more successful they are. Every single person I know who has really tried to find a job they love has managed it eventually.

Almost nothing you do, Bruce, will affect your happiness for your whole life more than finding a job you like. There is always hope. Spend a lot of time on this: make a really long list. Think whether you could create your own job. Eventually they create their own job, one they like, either by persuading someone else to employ them, or through self-employment.

They nearly always end up relishing their new work. Whether you really want the job or not shows through more than people imagine. Other friends have moved to jobs they like that pay less well, and found some way of dealing with the money - by downscaling their spending, having two or more workers in the family, or using savings. Title: Living The 80 20 Way Author: www. It goes something like this:.

Other than two people that is: Richard Kock and Tim Ferriss—and the people who have since followed in their footsteps me included. It took me reading it a couple times to grasp the simplicity and life-altering implications of the principle. The time saved and gained will blow your mind. The amazing thing is that the studies in this book show the principle working in just about every possible scenario.

But the point is it works—without fail. When applied to work, productivity will go through the roof, but when applied to your life outside of work, happiness and fulfillment do just the same. All it takes is a shift in thinking. Try the following for a few weeks and the time in your life will never be the same. How many of these things were necessary? How many got you closer to your goals? How many were a waste of time?

How many could someone else have done? Paperback , pages. Published May 1st by Nicholas Brealey Publishing first published More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Do you think the book is still relevant? Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Add this book to your favorite list ». Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3.

Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Apr 29, David rated it really liked it. Richard Koch has balls the size of grapefruit to essentially tell us right up front how ill-suited he is to a task like writing a book. And in some ways, he's clearly right. It's a sort of stream-of-conscious outpouring of advice tidbits with a single loosely-tied central theme: less is more.

But while thi Richard Koch has balls the size of grapefruit to essentially tell us right up front how ill-suited he is to a task like writing a book. But while this may be a bad book , I think the advice is actually quite excellent.

Advice usually is, I suppose. I mean, most of us know what it takes to lead healthy, fulfilling lives. I love Oliver Emberton's How to master your life post in which he demonstrates how easy it is to successfully guide a video game character's life using The Sims as his example.

If you want a character to become more intelligent, you have them spend their free time reading books. If you want them to make money, you have them get a job. So simple. And real life can work that way too: because there's nothing but your own inhibitions stopping you from doing the things you want to do. It just requires a little more effort than the video game because in real life you are both the video game player making the choices and the character doing the work.

Less is more. Let's take financial success: I love his ridiculously simple financial advice: "Save and invest 10 percent of your income before you receive it by having it automatically channeled into a savings account. For me, the hardest part of the book to apply to my own situation or to even fathom, because it gets a little Zen is the portion on time: having more time by doing less: "We have never had so much time, yet felt we had so little. After I became a parent, I'd done nothing but complain about my lack of time as I rushed to change my daily patterns to accommodate the sudden loss of the free time to which I'd become accustomed.

Just because some French novelist says something doesn't make it true - but I'm mature enough to recognize a flaw in my own behavior when I'm confronted with it. Since reading this, I've applied myself to making full use of my time.

I still complain it comes out before I can stop it! But at the end of the day, I can look back at my time spent and see less and less waste. It's working! I'm getting things done now in short spans of time that I couldn't have even imagined before. Savor life. That's up to me. I could sit around complain about it, or I could accomplish big projects an hour at a time.

You stop worrying about what other people think of you. What could be easier? More rewarding? What could electrify your life more? This was a very interesting concept to stumble upon. I think I did a bad j This was a very interesting concept to stumble upon. I think I did a bad job explaining it lol, the author did it in a much better way.

What I liked the most is that you can apply this concept not only to work, or studying but to relationships and in saving money. Jan, 18, Apr 19, Kelly rated it really liked it. This book was a wonderful, quick read. This book was a nice, simple discussion on how one can carefully and thoughtfully eradicated wasted time and low-value added activities a This book was a wonderful, quick read.

This book was a nice, simple discussion on how one can carefully and thoughtfully eradicated wasted time and low-value added activities and focus one's time on things that really matter to you and make you truly happy. The reader could be tempted to dismiss this book as so simple as to produce a "well duh" response. However, if you're like me you'll note that while simple these things aren't necessarily broadly practiced, and as a result, many miss out on the simple ideas conveyed in a masterful way in this book.

Additionally, I really appreciated his critique of common views of success and the overly acquisitive nature of society today. Really, really a great book. View 2 comments.