Prioritize for Progress: How the 80/20 Rule Can Transform Your Health Goals

The 80/20 rule is commonly discussed as a time management and prioritization tactic in business. However, this helpful principle isn’t only useful in the workplace; it can also help you reach your health and wellness goals.

Simply put, the 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of your results come from just 20% of your efforts. As such, you should prioritize only 20% of your activities to achieve the most effective results.

Proper prioritization is incredibly important in reaching your goals, but sometimes, it can be difficult to identify where your priorities should lie — and that’s where the 80/20 rule can help. Keep reading to discover how leveraging the 80/20 rule can streamline your approach to health goals, ensuring that focusing on specific, key activities yields the most progress.

Understanding the 80/20 Rule

As HubSpot, a leading business CRM tool, explains, the Pareto Principle came about in the early 1900s when Vilfredo Pareto analyzed wealth distribution in Italy. He noticed that just 20% of the country’s population oversaw 80% of the country’s wealth. Likewise, he noticed that this ratio could be applied to other areas like productivity and progress.

In general, the 80/20 rule states that, often, you can get a larger impact by focusing your attention on a smaller percentage of tasks. While this rule doesn’t always apply to every situation, it’s a philosophical theory that applies to many people and endeavors. Often, when it comes to your goals, you may spread yourself too thin by focusing on too many things at once, whereas distilling your focus down to 20% of your action items will yield greater results.

For example, you might have a lengthy to-do list every day. However, once you think about it, you’re getting 80% of your progress toward your goals by focusing on just 20% of that to-do list. As such, you would want to put most of your energy into that 20% and not worry about the other things on the list quite as much because you’re getting more value out of that 20%.

To make the 80/20 rule work for you, think about your goals and what’s helping you reach them most effectively. For example, maybe your goal is to get eight hours of sleep each night so that you have more energy during the day. As such, you might implement various tactics into your bedtime routine — gentle yoga, a bath, putting away your phone, reading, sipping tea, or turning down the temperature.

However, you might notice that even if you take a bath, do yoga, have a cup of tea, and read, you only successfully meet your sleep goal if you put away your phone and turn down the temperature in your bedroom — that’s your 20%! Those are the elements of the routine that truly matter. As such, you should always do those two things every night, whereas you could allot the other time at night to something else.

Implementing the 80/20 Rule

Once you’ve decided on your health goal and have determined what helps you reach that goal most effectively, be sure to set clear and measurable objectives to track your progress. Create a focused health plan that you can follow daily, with clear action items that keep you on track and accountability measures in place, such as working with a health coach.

Overcoming Common Challenges

As with many strategies, the 80/20 rule comes with challenges. If you’re a perfectionist, adjusting to the 80/20 rule may be difficult. Resist perfectionism as best you can. Perfecting those low-impact items doesn’t serve your needs or help you reach your goals. Additionally, be sure to recognize and celebrate each time you reach your goals to keep the motivation flowing.

The Bottom Line

The 80/20 rule helps you identify and prioritize the tasks that give you the highest return, so you can allocate your time and energy appropriately — and see greater progress toward your goals faster.

For more support in prioritizing your actions and achieving your goals this year, sign up for a free consultation call with an Arootah Coach today!