The Pareto Principle, also called the 80/20 rule, states that a few things (the vital few) are much more important than most things (the trivial many). I came across this principle many years ago, in Richard Koch’s wonderful book.

Applying the principle to one’s work and life takes practice and a certain amount of staring into the abyss — in my experience, it is absolutely worth it.

I am experimenting with a way to apply the 80/20 rule to what I am working on: the three bins.

Bin #1 is where the trivial few go: the gamechangers. These are the precious few actions that have an extremely high impact. Compared with the things in bin #2, the return is 10-100x higher. They are so important that, if properly executed, they can completely change the outlook and position of the project. Most of the time, it is not obvious at all what goes in bin #1. It often takes a combination of intuition and intense thinking to find something that belongs to bin #1. After it is found, all you need is courage to clear out everything else and carry it to completion.

Bin #2 is where normal work goes: the well-roundeds. These are actions that are demonstrably positive, but fail to have that skewed impact on outcomes. They are very much in the linear realm of things, where an X amount of effort yields a proportionate Y amount of reward. Reasonable teams plan and execute bin #2 actions all the time and can work like this for years, with good results. Only that these results are not 10-100x results.

Bin #3 are things that should be avoided, either because they have no appreciable value, or (more likely) because they can massively destroy value. These are the best-avoideds. In software projects, these are typically changes that add complexity to the system for doubtful reasons. Because they have zero or negative value, bin #3 is orders of magnitude worse than bin #2.

I’m going to apply this perspective to the work ahead, for both myself and the teams I’m involved with. If you give it a try, please let me know how it worked out for you.

Some questions on which I have no answers yet:

• Should one try to stay in bin #1 permanently? Or should there be a balance between working on gamechangers and on wellroundeds?
• Should some people in the team naturally gravitate towards gamechangers and others towards-well roundeds?
• Can one improve one’s personal and collective filter to stop best-avoided from passing as well-roundeds?