The 80-20 rule is not new (if you have heard of this but didn’t know the origin, it’s an historic economic principle credited to Vilfredo Pareto). Basically it means that 80% of your result comes from 20% of your effort, 80% of your funds raised come from 20% of your donors, and so on.

What if you applied this rule to your communications efforts? What if you focused more on the 20% that has the most impact? Sure signs you’re not doing this:

• You spend 80% of each day, day after day, fighting the daily fires and getting sucked into the minutia, and before you know it, the day is over and all you feel is frustration
• Your most important initiatives keep getting moved to the bottom of the list because you don’t have enough time to focus on them
• Working on a proactive project, e.g. reviewing your website for improvement, raising your donor cultivation program another notch, is a rare luxury saved for a rainy day
• You spend a lot of your time gathering intelligence, but not actually applying it. This can be said of most email correspondence, periodical reading, and professional development. All those great ideas are also saved for "when you have time."
• Your environment is working against you instead of for you - files you can’t locate, information you need from a staff member is inaccessible for whatever reason, or you simply can’t stop the interruptions and distraction.

I have news for you - it can get better! Watch for more on how to focus on the higher value activities that will speed up your progress and gain momentum at the same time.  In the meantime, I challenge you to take one hour (which happens to be 20% of the average five productive hours spent in the typical workday) this week and make a list of the activities and communications tools your organization relies upon - which are the ones that give you the biggest bang for your buck?