The 80/20 Rule

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, describes the common situation where 20% of the effort gets 80% of the results. That's where to invest your energy.

It’s not uncommon for 20% of the sales force to make 80% of the sales. Or 20% of the customers to generate 80% of the profits. It’s likely that 20% of your effort produces 80% of your results.

The point is that input and output are not balanced. As marketers, we break the market into pieces (“segments”) in order to identify and focus our attention on the significant few who produce most of the results.

As designers of learning experiences, less is often more. Find the elusive 20% of the learner’s time that yields 80% of what is learned and put your energies there.