What is an example of the 80/20 principle?

Customers: A small share of clients often drives most of a business's revenue.

Where do you see the 80/20 principle in everyday life?

Customers; Your wardrobe; Bugs; To-do lists; Skills at work.

Find the ~20% of inputs driving ~80% of your results — clients, tasks, habits — and double down there; trim the rest.

Curated by Paulo de Vries · reviewed 2026-05-30

The 80/20 principle (Pareto) says roughly 80% of results come from about 20% of causes — so find the vital few and focus there. Examples:

Customers
A small share of clients often drives most of a business's revenue.
Your wardrobe
You wear about 20% of your clothes around 80% of the time.
Bugs
A handful of defects tend to cause the majority of crashes and complaints.
To-do lists
One or two tasks deliver most of the day's real value; the rest is busywork dressed as progress.
Skills at work
A few high-leverage skills account for most of your actual impact.

Find the ~20% of inputs driving ~80% of your results — clients, tasks, habits — and double down there; trim the rest.
Apply it to problems too: a few causes usually drive most of the trouble, so fix those first.
Before adding effort, ask whether you're working on the vital few or the trivial many.

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