20 Rules That You Should Follow 80% of the Time

According to the Pareto Principle, 20% of all activities produce 80% of all results. To put it in another way, people tend to expend 80% of their efforts on activities that have minimal effects on the results. The Pareto Principle can be validated by looking at many of your past successes that you are most proud of. In hindsight, it seemed so easy because we focused on the right or the best 20% of the activities, whether it was expertise, guidance or sheer luck on how things fell into place. People who are focused on activities that produce results are those who have created goals and plans and follow these plans while making minor adjustments to them. Who has time for goals?  We’ll get back to that in a minute. Here’s another question: Who even has the time to read all of the content that lands in your feed?  Believe it or not, you are utilizing the 80/20 rule as you purposely filter things out. We tend to filter out 80% of the online content that requires thought, learning, or reflection and head right to the 20% that the reader finds entertaining. If it was a choice between entertainment or learning and applying a new skill, most people go right for the entertainment.
Let’s get back to the Pareto Principle more commonly called The 80/20 rule. Let’s apply the 80/20 rule to an area of interest in this blog, personal finance and setting goals. Goal setting sucks when you have to start with a blank sheet of paper, doesn’t it? What if we provided you with 20 turn-key goals that you can call your own? Wouldn’t that be easy? Let’s take it one step further, and say instead of goals, let’s call them Rules. Rules? Really? Yes, because it assigns a little more accountability. Remember earlier, I mentioned past successes and how easy they seemed after the fact because you focused on the right 20%, now let’s apply that to the 20 Rules of Personal Finance. Everything you need to know about Personal Finance is covered in these 20 rules. It’s 100 Rules, and applying the 80/20 rule and magic of blogging, we’ll work these 20. Ben Carlson wrote an excellent blog that covers the rules that will give you the biggest bang for blog time. 80% of the rules hit home with me as I mastered these along with my journey, unfortunately, I had to collect them along the way over several years. Here they are, all in one well-written easy-to-follow blog. If you spend 20% of your goal-setting time considering these rules, you will be well on your way to mastering 80% of your very own Personal Finance skills. These skills pay you personal dividends in the currency of more structure, profit, and ease of use.
Take the time to take the risk and click the link to Ben’s blog. Save it and read through it after you’ve just finished paying a pile of bills. Jack Sparrow (Pirates of the Caribbean), called that “Leverage”. If you want the bottom line, go right to rule #20. Rules 1-19 will provide you the structure to sustain it long-term.

The beauty of blogs is that they filter 80% of noise not important to you so you can focus on the 20% that matters most to you. Read on and Carry On.

http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2016/12/20-rules-of-personal-finance/

Author: Francis

Started out in science and somehow ended up in sales & marketing. Grew into a results oriented sales professional with extensive experience selling and positioning scientific solutions in the pharma/biotech, life sciences and medical diagnostics markets. In 1998 I created an excel sheet to track spending and cash flow to learn personal finance on my own. They don't teach this in school and by the time one figures it out, most of let all these resources slip through our fingers. It's time to pay it forward to this next gen so that they can shave 15-20 years off for working for "the man" with insights, a library of tools, and motivation from me and plenty of other FI bloggers that I follow.

2 thoughts on “20 Rules That You Should Follow 80% of the Time”

  1. Thank you for taking the time to comment. Please pass it along as I’m looking for feedback on how these best practices are applied with
    others. A success story would be very welcome.

  2. Excellent website. Plenty of useful information here.
    I’m sending it to several buddies ans also sharing in delicious.
    And of course, thank you to your effort!

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