The 80/20 Teacher – How the Secret to Success is Working Less

Every now and again, it is a good idea to poke your head outside your own box and see what’s going on. This time I’m bringing you, my dear readers, into the business world, to see what knowledge it can lend to the teaching world. Nathan is an entrepreneur, investor, and consultant/advisor (read his full bio below). More importantly he’s also my husband.

The 80/20 Teacher – How the Secret to Success is Working Less

By Nathan Meffert

INTRODUCTION

In 1906, the Italian industrialist, sociologist, economist, and philosopher Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto made the observation that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, and further developed his thesis by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

Since Vilfredo’s time, the law has become widely popularized as the “80/20 Principle” or, sometimes, as the “Pareto Principle. To put it simply, the law states that:

80% of outputs (results) flow from 20% of inputs (causes)

Vilfredo’s law figured centrally into the manufacturing industry’s quality control revolution during the 1950s and 60s (“80% of defects/inefficiencies come from 20% of personnel, machinery, etc.”). The digital revolution was also driven by application of the law (“80% of errors and crashes come from 20% of bugs”). And, even more recently, the law is being applied in an even broader context to personal effectiveness (“80% of results come from 20% of activities”) and business design/redesign (“80% of sales come from 20% of clients”).

SO WHAT?

As we drill down farther into a search for a teacher’s application of the thing, I’ll put it another way:

The results you get are never, ever, going to be in a 50:50 relationship to the causes of those results. Instead, it will always be a minority of causes responsible for a majority of the results.

One of the most powerful implications here is that the majority of inputs could (and should) be eliminated completely, or else completely revolutionized. Having studied the principle at work in nature, culture, and economics for more than 10 years now myself, I say with confidence that, wherever this principle has not been mindfully applied, all systems of government, community, education, finance, and settlement are both grossly wasteful and inefficient.

Through the faithful application of the 80/20 Principle, we could all be having a much better time getting the results we want instead of struggling under the weight of full days, weeks, months, and years of wasted effort, ending up with results we’re not so sure about.

In all fact, the principle has been grossly under-applied. And that’s where you come in. It’s time to change all that.

THE EXERCISE

The universality of the 80/20 Principle/Pareto Principle is amazing. You or I literally cannot escape the damn thing. To help me prove my point, please do an experiment….

Step 1: Write out your current #1 goal for your students. (Ex., “All students will be able to order burrito in Spanish by the end of the Spring semester.”)

Before anything else, you’ve got to be clear on your goal(s) and the standards you will measure achievement by. If you haven’t done this before, make your goal clear and measurable. Leave yourself no “weasel clause”, or back door. With a clear and measurable goal there is no way of saying, “Well, I, uh, basically achieved it” – either you did or you didn’t. There’s no in-between.

Step 2: Make a numbered list of tasks you do day in and day out to move towards meeting this goal.

Go ahead and make this an exhaustive list. We may as well totally revolutionize your teaching practice right now.

Step 3: Take the total number of tasks and multiply it by .20 (20%). If the number is a fraction, round it to the nearest whole number (2.3 becomes 2, 3.6 becomes 4).

You have just figured out how many of these tasks make up 20% of the total number of tasks. (I know, sorry about the math, non-math teachers. You can do it! Or, here’s another idea: you could simply outsource the task to a math teacher down the hall, and in doing so, plant a seed for a school-wide time revolution!)

Step 4: Ask yourself this question: “If I could only work on meeting this goal with my students for 1 day per week (20% of five days!), which 20% of tasks would I keep and focus on and which 80% would I throw out?” Make a list.

Step 5 (for true time revolutionaries): Throw out the other 80% now and focus on your 20%. You don’t have a second to waste.

Spend your new free time setting up conference calls between your students and native speakers in South America, taking them on field trips, or arranging for professional mentors (other than you!) to come in to speak to your students. Read amazing stories of inspiring mentors in the subject area to your students, or…

Step 5 (lite): Make sure that every day you plan your lessons around that 20%. Do those items first. If you get the 80%, great, if not, you have still succeeded.

FINAL WORD

Enjoy – and please, please, please send me updates on your exploits as an 80/20 time revolutionary! I’m always looking for new stories and love hearing from fellow freedom fighters!

Also, for more on the 80/20 Principle, I highly recommend checking out “The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less” by Richard Koch.

Nathan Meffert is an entrepreneur, real estate and angel investor, coach, and adviser to businesses and individuals in multiple industries and walks of life. His professional specialties are product design, marketing, social entrepreneurship, culture, personal effectiveness, and sustainability. Personally, he enjoys playing music, writing, language learning, travel, board sports, and martial arts. He has been the co-founder of New Leaf Regenerative Design, a longtime teacher at the Regenerative Design Institute, and, most recently, is serving as an advisor to a crowdsourced real estate investing joint venture in the desert southwest.
To get in touch with Nathan, email nathan.meffert@gmail.com. You can also find him on Twitter (@nmeffert) and on Facebook (Nathan Meffert).