An Italian professor, by name Pareto, discovered that 80% of the problems, when solved, give only 20% of the total benefit, while 20% of the problems, when solved, yield 80% of the benefit. Professor JM Juran, the American quality management specialist, restated the same principle – as “the trivial many and vital few”. It is a good idea to classify problems into "vital" and "trivial". This automatically decides the priority that any problem merits. Vital problems, of course, get high priority and trivial problems get low priority. This is an excellent management philosophy.
Resources are always limited, generally, for any one individual or for any organization. In a real world situation, you never have enough resources for all your activities. Therefore, you cannot address all problems, all at the same time, to obtain all the possible benefit. You naturally, would like to conserve the limited resources that you have and use them first, to address those problems that give you the maximum benefit. It, therefore, appears prudent to address the 20% high priority (vital) problems first, to ensure that you get the 80% benefit. If there are still some resources remaining, you can attend to some of the remaining 80% of the problems. This is how you make use of the Pareto principle in managing your resources and objectives.
When we tend to do things mechanically without thinking, we get overwhelmed even by trivial problems. A great majority of life’s problems are trivial by nature – and we can solve them by commonsense alone. When you seek help even for trivial problems, you never develop self- reliance, self confidence and self-esteem.
Do not be afraid to “think”. It is so very easy to think. Think big. Big or small, think - and solve problems.
The next thought is about “How to fix goals: Part 1 - list your priority needs”
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