pareto principle
Pareto Principle is the idea that roughly 20% of your effort, customers, or habits usually produce about 80% of your results.
In plain English
You know that one aunty in the family group chat who does almost all the talking, shares almost all the news, and somehow starts almost every quarrel, while everyone else just reacts with thumbs up emojis? Every group, every business, every wardrobe has an aunty like that. A small handful of things doing most of the work while the rest just tag along. That is the Pareto Principle in real life, long before anyone gave it a fancy name.
An Italian economist called Vilfredo Pareto noticed in the late 1800s that a small percentage of people owned most of the land in Italy. Later, business thinkers picked up his idea and stretched it further, noticing the same pattern everywhere. About 20% of causes tend to produce about 80% of results. It is not a strict law like gravity, more like a pattern that keeps showing up once you start looking for it.
Take a shop owner in Onitsha selling provisions. She might have three hundred items on her shelves, but if she is honest with her sales book, she will probably find that maybe sixty of those items bring in most of her weekly profit. Rice, cooking oil, seasoning cubes, drinks. The rest are just filling up shelf space and tying down her capital.
In the United Kingdom, a small business owner running an online shop might notice that out of two hundred products listed, only about forty actually get ordered regularly. The other one hundred and sixty just sit there, taking photography time, storage space, and admin energy for very little return.
The real gift of this principle is not the exact numbers, which shift from 70/30 to 90/10 depending on the situation. The gift is the habit of asking, of everything I am doing right now, which small part is actually carrying the weight? Once you find that part, you protect it, feed it, and stop apologising for cutting back on the rest.
A landlord in Lagos owns twelve rental properties. On checking his records, he finds that just three of those properties, the ones near the express road, bring in about 80% of his total rental income for the year. The other nine, scattered in quieter areas, barely cover their own maintenance. Knowing this, he stops chasing small repairs everywhere and focuses his ₦2,000,000 renovation budget on the three properties that actually make him money.
Questions people ask
Is the 80/20 split always exact?
No, and that is fine. Sometimes it is closer to 70/30, sometimes 90/10. The number is not the point, the pattern is. A small share of causes usually produces a large share of results, so the real work is finding your own ratio rather than forcing it to match exactly.
How can I use the Pareto Principle with my personal money?
Look at where your money actually goes each month and where your income actually comes from. Many people find that a small number of spending habits eat most of their budget, and a small number of income sources bring in most of their earnings. Once you see that clearly, you can trim the small leaks and protect the big earners.
Does this mean I should ignore the smaller 80%?
Not entirely. Sometimes small, steady things add stability even if they are not spectacular. The principle is a lens for focus, not a licence to abandon everything outside the top 20%. Use it to set priorities, not to throw away things that still calmly hold value.
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