So I've finally finished Level 2 - Using Pareto's and Parkinson's Law

I've been with Wealthy Affiliate since last year September, and only now have I managed to finish Level 2. Took me some time right? Well, there were some complications along the way and I was out the country. But I'm back, and more dedicated than ever.

To be honest there was no real reason that it took so long to get this far, I became more or less lazy and uninspired. I'd find myself constantly wasting time and finding ways to procrastinate. But I had to change that, I had a dream ahead of me and I needed to chase it.

I was reading a book called 'The 4 Hour Work Week' and have found some true gems in it to help increase productivity and I thought I'd share my two favourites here as a reminder for myself and others who can take heed.

Here are two laws you can use to help increase productivity:

Pareto's Law

Vilfredo Pareto who was an Italian Engineer came up with what's also known as the 80/20 Principle. This principle was first introduced into economics but it was discovered that it applied to much more than that.
The 80/20 principle stated that '80% of X is the result of 20% of Y'. In this case you could think and ask yourself:

• What 20% of my habits are the cause of 80% of my time being wasted?
• Which 20% are sources are resulting in 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
• What 20% of my choices create 80% of my outcomes?
  

You get the idea, and the list goes on. Think to yourself, what are the small things in my life that I need to eliminate in order to maximise my productivity, or happiness? The small things I need to enforce to maximise my productivity and happiness?

What do I need to cut back on or increase to make my life better?

In my case I have a bad habit of randomly picking up my phone and browsing Instagram, what I thought would only be for 3 minutes turns into a whole hour and that's one hour I could've spent making some serious progress. So I need to take steps in order to cut this down.

On the flip side, what small thing is responsible for the majority of my success? Consistency perhaps? Effective communication? These are all things I can do more of.

Parkinson's Law

The second principle, this goes hand in hand with Pareto's.

Parkinson's Law states that the importance of a task or objective will be dependent on the amount of time you have to do it.

You don't need a whole day to finish a task that you can easily do within a few hours or less, the extra hours is only there as an excuse to waste unecessary time.

Give youself the least amount of time possible to do something and the pressure will drive you to focus on execution, you'll be forced to do the bare essentials leaving no room for redundancy and excess.

One example I can recall is having a College assignment to finish. We'd have about three solid months to do it. Did I do it in the first month? No. Second? Heck no! I started my assignments one week before the deadline and that's because at the time did I finally start stressing on the amount of work I had left to do. The closer you are to the deadline, the more important the task becomes to you.

But what's the point of this if there is no penalty to enforce you to follow this law?

Well I suppose you can make one up. I give myself say a couple hours to complete a certain task or I'll not allow myself to play some Call of Duty with the boys that night. Something like that. It all depends on discipline and willpower.

So in principle, set yourself a certain amount of time to do a task whether it is writing content for your page or working on your course, the shorter the better and more urgent.

Using the two laws together

If you can master these two principles and use them together then productivity will increase gradually, it's all about being efficient and effective. Productivity instead of being or looking busy.
Identify the few critical things you can do to maximise productivity, identify the small sources of your time wasting and eliminate them out of your routine and set strict deadlines to your work. If you were able to kill these time wasting habits and take advantage of efficiency boosting habits then finishing tasks before the deadline will become a much easier thing to accomplish.