Back in 1906, Vilfredo Pareto came up with a concept that has forever changed the…well, every industry.

The Pareto Principle, aka The 80/20 rule, was applied early to point out that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people.

Over the years, lots of other smart people found that this concept held up in business and productivity…and that’s what I’d like to focus on.

It’s typically used to analyze something after the fact, which is fine. But some take it a step further and apply it by filtering out the 80%.

That’s where the magic begins, because you can you do 20% of the work and get 80% of the results.

However, it doesn’t stop at that point. There’s a higher level to explore.

In all the posts and books I’ve read on this amazing concept, and how to apply it to your life/career, none have suggested extending it beyond ONE thing. Back to that in a second.

First, let’s dive a bit deeper:

While the Italian population fit the 80/20 ratio, not everything does.

Maybe 15% of your clients produce 75% of your profit, or 10% of your blog posts get 60% of your traffic.

If we apply the Pareto Principle by taking it deeper to find the true heavy hitters, the whales, the few things that contribute the most value…

Then, we can do it again and again to maximize our results without increasing effort at all.

So here’s the idea:

• Find the 20% of effort that brings 80% of the results.
• Then – here’s the key – find something else and its top 20%.
• Now, you’re getting 160% of the results with 40% effort.

Why stop at the first 80% that comes your way?

Here’s the math:

• Max Effort = 100%
• Effort for Activity A = 20%, Results = 80%
• Effort for Activity B = 20%, Results = 80%
• Effort for Activity C = 20%, Results = 80%
• Effort for Activity D = 20%, Results = 80%
• Effort for Activity E = 20%, Results = 80%
• Total Effort = 100%
• Total Results = 400%

See how that works?

Now, the first thing I thought when I wrote that was “Sure, it sounds good on paper/screen, but how do you find the other activities?”

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not easy. But it’s much easier now than ever. Why? Mostly because of the easy access to information online.

For example, say you start a freelance writing business. After 6 months, you take a good look at the numbers and realize that after working with 10 blogs, 2 of them (20%) have earned 70-80% of your revenue.

Now, figure out WHY they made more than the others, and DO IT AGAIN.

In this case, maybe you dig a little deeper and find that these blogs aren’t the biggest, but you happened to get the most repeat work from them.

Digging deeper, you find that they hire you the most because you came up with an idea for a post series for both of them, they loved the series idea, it worked well in terms of shares and traffic, and they hired you to do it again.

See where this is going?

At this point, some people would cut out the other 8 clients, freeing up a ton of time they were spending on low-value effort, allowing them to get almost as much output for a small fraction of the input.

But that could be a huge waste of the relationships built.

If you’re trying to maximize profit per month, it would be better to spend some time coming up with awesome series ideas tailored to the ones with the most potential, and pitch the ideas one by one.

You could even give a discount for the posts since they’re in bulk. A couple of them love the idea, and try it out. It works with some, so you continue working with them.

Now, you filter out the ones that didn’t bite, and continue working with the ones that did. But why stop there? Start applying this to other industries!

It never stops, because theoretically you could end up working with one blog in each of 20 different industries, each taking up 5% of your available effort (100% total), but bringing in 20% or more of your original profit.

This is where the math gets really fun:

• 20 Activities x 5% Effort = 100% Effort
• 20 Activities x 20% Results = 400% Results

Ahh, math. It’s a beautiful thing, especially when it helps you get 4x more for the same investment.

Your turn: Think about how you can apply this in your own life and work. Hope it helps you to filter out the things that aren’t worth your time and take it to the next level.

If you like productivity frameworks like this one, On the Right Path is jam-packed with them.