Richard Koch - The 80/20 Principle (1997)

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Conventional wisdom is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. 80/20 wisdom is to choose a basket carefully, load all your eggs into it, and then watch it like a hawk.

Richard Koch
Use all the willpower at your disposal to make yourself happy. Construct the right stories about yourself - and believe them!

Richard Koch
Make the choice that you want to be happy. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to other people too.

Richard Koch
Where a chunk of business is simple, the chances are that it is.

Richard Koch
Strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many.

Richard Koch
If we want to sum up the theory of evolution by natural selection in two words, which have great relevance for all societies and businesses, we should simply remember: diversity works.

Richard Koch
Most of us don't work out what we want. And most of us end up with lopsided lives as a result.

Richard Koch
Celebrate exceptional productivity, rather than raise average efforts.

Richard Koch
What could you achieve that would make you proud, that no one else could do with the same ease?

Richard Koch
Few people take objectives really seriously. They put average effort into too many things, rather than superior thought and effort into a few important things. People who achieve the most are selective as well as determined.

Richard Koch
If we did realize the difference between the vital few and the trivial many in all aspects of our lives, and if we did something about it, we could multiply anything that we valued.

Richard Koch
The 80/20 Principle, like the truth, can make you free. You can work less. At the same time, you can earn more and enjoy more. The only price is that you need to do some serious 80/20 thinking.

Richard Koch
Progress is personal; it comes from individuals demanding more of themselves and everyone else.

Richard Koch
The road to hell is paved with the pursuit of volume. Volume leads to marginal products, marginal customers, and greatly increased managerial complexity.

Richard Koch
Our current use of time is not rational. There is therefore no point in seeking marginal improvements in how we spend our time. We need to go back to the drawing board and overturn all our assumptions about time.

Richard Koch
There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 per cent of our time.... The 80/20 principle says that if we doubled our time on the top 20% of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 per cent more than now.

Richard Koch
Everything you want should be yours: the type of work you want; the relationships you need; the social, mental, and aesthetic stimulation that will make you happy and fulfilled; the money you require for the lifestyle that is appropriate to you; and any requirement that you may (or may not) have for achievement or service to others. If you don't aim for it all, you'll never get it all. To aim for it requires that you know what you want

Richard Koch
It may be that you will be happiest in the rat race; perhaps, like me, you are basically a rat.

Richard Koch
If a species is diverse, it can survive and prosper. If a species is homogeneous, it is vulnerable.

Richard Koch
In business the 80/20 principle is behind any innovation, any extra value. It is an entrepreneurial principle, a formula for value creation utilized not only by entrepreneurs, but by most managers and organizations.

Richard Koch
It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways.

Richard Koch
Business strategy should not be a grand and sweeping overview. It should be more like an under view, a peek beneath the covers to look in great detail at what is going on.

Richard Koch
People think that creativity is largely a matter of talent, experience, or luck. They are wrong. Talent, experience, and luck are all key elements, but there is something more fundamental, accessible, and powerful that you can use to multiply your creative effect.

Richard Koch
Hard work leads to low returns. Insight and doing what we want lead to high returns.

Richard Koch
Marketing, and the whole firm, should devote extraordinary endeavour towards delighting, keeping for ever and expanding the sales to the 20 per cent of customers who provide 80 per cent.

Richard Koch