The 4 Percent Rule of Productivity will help you thrive. I will tell you why and how you can use it. You can use it for your own development. Use it at work. Use it in almost everything you do.
You may work on 100 things each day. You can do it because you can decide on the 100 things that you want to do. I know a lot of people who believe themselves to be productive if they get many things done in a day.
You may pick 100 products and try your best to sell them. I know of many training providers who pride themselves on offering any training product you can think of. That’s what I also did when I was younger.
Endless Attempts to Do More
These days, I still do many things.
But I am aware that not all things are equal.
That there is one thing or a few things I can do that makes many things unnecessary.
That there is one strategy that I can employ which can produce 10x, 100x, or 1000x the results.
That there is one productive habit that can replace all the unproductive habits.
I came up with the Four Percent Rule. You can use it to multiply your results and minimize your efforts.
What is the 4 Percent Rule?
The 4 Percent Rule is based on the Pareto Principle. If 20 percent of our work produces 80 percent of our results, then to become more productive, we must be able to identify our 20 percent more productive activities and do our best to replace all the other nonproductive activities with productive ones. The 20% of our productive activities is 4%.
Four percent of what we do produces 64 percent of our productivity.
Isn’t that amazing?
Our aim is not to do more every day but to find the 4 percent that produces 64 percent of our productivity. Then, when you double down on your 4 percent, you will likely be more than 100% each day.
Some may scratch their heads.
But eighty percent (less productive) activities of the most productive people can be our 20% most productive. That means they do something which we don’t do. And what we have in common with them is their 80 percent, and we do it less.
On the other hand, it is likely that they don’t do our 80 percent, which may include watching TV for hours, arguing with strangers on Facebook, watching Tiktok, and other activities that do not produce anything of value to us or others.
When you follow the 4 Percent Rule, you pay attention to your intention.
