Have you ever made a list of New Year resolutions with the best of intentions, and, not long after the beginning of the New Year, not much happened and the list was forgotten?
If you really want to make progress this New Year, I suggest that you shrink your list to only one or two items. Fewer is better.
Having many goals diffuses your energy, so it’s harder to achieve them.
During the 1790s, Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist and sociologist, discovered that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.
Joseph Mose Juran, an American engineer, did further research on the concept, which he named the Pareto Principle, or the Law of the Vital Few, and found that the overwhelming majority of results were a consequence of a small fraction of the effort.
Juran taught Japanese businesses to apply the principle to focus on the key factors for improving the quality of their products. Before they changed their quality control procedures, Japanese products had the reputation of being cheap and of poor quality. Today, Japanese products are considered to be desirable and of the highest quality.
Too often, we’re engaged working on the trivial many, and not enough attention is given to the vital few.
One of our most valuable skills might be learning to say “No” more often.
What one thing do you really want to achieve in 2025? Make that your New Year resolution for 2025.