Books by Richard Koch
Living the 80/20 Way is the Richard Koch book in our library. It takes the observation that a small number of inputs produce most of the output and applies it to how you spend time rather than to how businesses are run.
The uncomfortable half of the argument is that this applies to the things you do badly as much as to the things you do well. A few activities are carrying your results, and most of your hours are not among them. The book is about noticing which is which.
How to read it. Read it when you are busy and productive and not obviously getting anywhere. It is a book about choosing rather than about working harder.
It sits in the Productivity bundle as the one book here about choosing rather than doing. The others assume you should do more, and this one is the reason to question that.
The book
Living the 80/20 Way: Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More
Richard KochEffort treated as something to allocate rather than to increase. If most of your results come from a few activities, identifying those few is worth more than optimising all of them, and the corollary is that a great deal of what you do currently could be dropped with little loss.
What it argues- A small number of inputs produce a large share of the output, in work and in life.
- Identify the few, then give them more time rather than working longer overall.
- The principle applies to what you do badly too, so it is also a pruning tool.
- Choose a few things to do exceptionally well rather than many things adequately.
- Elimination is usually the fastest available improvement.
Suited to a reader who is genuinely busy and suspects the busyness is not the same as progress. Less useful if your problem is that you are not doing enough, since this book may give you permission you do not need.
Where to start
Read it with your calendar open. The book only works if you apply it to your own list while reading, because the exercise is finding the few rather than understanding the ratio. If nothing else, work out which two activities produced most of last year, then count how much of this year is aimed at things that produced nothing.
Where this fits
This is the counterpart to the other productivity books, which mostly assume you should do more. It is the one that argues for doing less, deliberately, and it pairs with Deep Work, which makes a similar claim about which hours are worth protecting. Read them together if the problem is that everything on your list looks reasonable.
The rest of this shelf
The Productivity shelf holds 5 books in total. These are the others, each condensed into a guide you can finish in about 15 minutes:
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
- Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy
- The Pomodoro Technique: The Acclaimed Time-Management System That Has Transformed How We Work by Francesco Cirillo
- The 5 AM Club: Own Your Morning. Elevate Your Life. by Robin Sharma
Work less, and read the other four
Living the 80/20 Way is in the Productivity bundle with Getting Things Done, Eat That Frog!, The Pomodoro Technique and The 5 AM Club.
Five complete guides, about 15 minutes each.
Explore ProductivityChoose the few inputs that carry the result.