The Pareto Principle

I was reading about the Pareto Principle at James’ Organize IT blog, and it made me think. The principle is basically that 80% of what you value comes from 20% of your work, meaning a lot of time is wasted on less important things. James pairs this with Parkinson’s Law that work expands to fill the time allowed. That is to say… the not so important stuff sucks up 80% of your time because nothing (or no one) stops it from doing so.

If you want to change this, how do you determine which tasks are the valuable “20%” ones vs. the less important “80%” ones? For example, when is focusing on a “quality issue” a valued effort to save time and energy later vs. an example of less important perfectionism?

Last week I invested several hours into two tasks worth examining:

• The Midterm Evals - We received students’ midterm course evaluation results in an Excel spreadsheet with three tabs. Some evaluation questions are covered in the first tab and some in the second, and student comments are in the third. Thus, to see results for a single course, you need to scroll through three worksheets. I spent a few hours creating a fourth worksheet that provides a drop-down list of instructors and courses, and integrates all three tabs of information on that course in one place.
• Course Templates - I spent several hours last week polishing a course website template and tutorial on using it with our course management software. The software automatically creates a blank course website and enrolls your students in it for you, so students can quickly see… nothing. I created a template you can upload that creates a folder for each week of class and includes spots for weekly objectives, readings, assignments, discussion boards….

So were these “20%” or “80%” tasks? Both could have been “outsourced” to someone else to do, and neither brought me any immediate gains, so you could argue both were “80%” efforts. However, we have begun hiring instructors for Spring. Before re-hiring brand new instructors, I want to know how students experience their teaching, and so two weeks later am referencing this integrative spreadsheet much more. Course website templates may also increase our use of technology, may helps us recruit new instructors, and may help new instructors create good courses. All of these are goals for the Department, so I am inclined to think they were examples of “20%” work.

A few things occurred to me:

• In both cases some of the work could have been outsourced to a “technology person” … but ask anyone in my Department and they’ll tell you that person is me.
• I will have to follow up with both tasks to see how much of a difference the result makes. If the integrative worksheet saves 6 minutes of time as we review 10 instructors, then it is one hour saved, and I invested more time than I gained. If we can reuse the integration worksheet two more semesters, then I gain some time. How many additional instructors must use the course website software to justify my time? One, three, or ten? I’ll have to figure out how to set some kind of outcome goal, and judge the results.

So… back to the question. How can I differentiate the valuable “20%” from the less important “80%” tasks? Maybe I can’t. While some tasks could clearly be classified in advance, perhaps the rest must be “set.” Doing the work in a way that allows it to be reused, aligning the task with more than one goal, and establishing criteria to judge the outcome may be the way to determine whether a task will be an “80%” or a “20%” effort.