TSS #071: Boost Your Biz: Pinpoint Your 20% High-Impact Tasks

Here's exactly how you find the 20% of tasks you should focus on to boost your business. [View in Web Browser]( Read on: [justinwelsh.me]( Read time: 3 minutes A big thank you to our sponsors who keep this newsletter free to the reader: Use code JUSTIN to get free access (normally $500) to the [Umbrex Guide to Setting Up Your Consulting Practice,]( which includes 90 short videos and 30 templates developed based on conversations with over 1,000 independent professionals. [Join here](. And [Trutopia.com]( - the smartest way to get the right credit cards for you and your business. [Give it a try today](. --------------------------------------------------------------- If you're a Solopreneur, you're probably juggling a ton of work. Especially if you’re building something on the side of your full-time job. Whether it's [building up your audience](, selling courses, running a newsletter, coaching, or managing a cohort-based program, there's likely too much stuff on your plate. And with limited time, you want to make sure you're focused on the things that actually make a difference. You’ve probably heard of Pareto's Law: 80% of our results come from 20% of our actions. But the biggest challenge lies in figuring out which actions make up that 20%. So this week I’m sharing a simple process to help you pinpoint your most valuable tasks so you can make the most of your limited time and energy. Step 1: Brainstorm and List Your Tasks Step one is to get everything out on the table - and I mean everything. Go old school with paper and pen, and make a list of all the tasks you juggle for your business. List everything from content creation and marketing to customer support, managing vendors, building products, and admin work. Even the [smallest tasks add up](, so include everything you can think of. It’s not important to filter or prioritize yet. We'll get to that soon. Step 2: Choose Primary Outcome & Score Your Tasks Once you have your task list, it’s time to decide what impact you want to focus on. What’s the highest priority result you want to achieve? Are you trying to grow your following? [Increase subscribers to your newsletter](? Get more people to your website? Or sell more products? Every priority requires a different focus, so it’s important to choose your most desired outcome. Let’s call this your primary outcome. Once you’ve defined your primary outcome, it's time to give each task on your list an “Impact Score”. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the impact each task has on your primary outcome. Step 3: Identify Time Spent On Each Task Next, estimate how much time you typically spend on each of your tasks per week. This will illuminate whether or not you’re spending your time effectively. And if you’re like me, you’ll see trends emerge almost immediately. You’ll uncover tasks where you spend a ton of time and get little in return towards your primary outcome, or high-value tasks that you don’t spend enough time on at all! Step 4: Calculate Your Impact-To-Time Ratio Now that you have an impact score and time investment estimate for each task, it's easy to calculate your impact-to-time ratio. All you have to do is divide the impact score by the time spent on the task. For example, let’s say your primary outcome is to grow your following on social media. Let’s compare two tasks and see which one is more valuable for your outcome: - Answering admin emails impact: 3 out of 10 - Time spent answering admin emails: 3 hours - Impact-to-time ratio: 1 (3 divided by 3) Now compare that to: - Writing Twitter content impact: 8 out of 10 - Time spent writing Twitter content: 2 hours - Impact-to-time ratio: 4 (8 divided by 2) In this example, it’s easy to see that the time spent writing content is 4x more impactful for growing your social media following. Now perform this calculation across all the tasks on your list. This will give you a simple, clear, and objective measure of which tasks deliver the biggest bang for your time and effort. Step 5: Prioritize and Focus The last step is the fun part - sort your tasks from the highest to lowest value. Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a long list of tasks with their impact scores. We want to identify the 20% of tasks that Pareto’s Law refers to. So let’s say you have 30 tasks. Picking the top 20% is easy - It’s the top 6 on your list. Focusing on your top 20% of tasks will ensure you're maximizing your time on your most valuable tasks. For the other 80% of tasks, you can [eliminate, simplify, automate, or delegate](. Don’t spend your time here! Because remember: it's not necessarily about doing less work, but about working smarter. Final thoughts I recommend revisiting this exercise twice a year, or even once per quarter, as your priorities change. And make sure you keep this process in handy when you need to refocus. I hope this simple and practical approach to Pareto's Law helps you push away lower-value work and focus on moving your business forward, one critical metric at a time. That’s all for this week. See you next Saturday. --------------------------------------------------------------- Whenever you're ready, there are 2 ways I can help you: 1. If you're still looking for traction in your business, I'd recommend starting with an affordable course: → [The LinkedIn Operating System:]( Transform your LinkedIn profile into a lead generation machine with The LinkedIn Operating System. This comprehensive course will teach you the system I use to grow from 0 to 400,000+ followers and $4M in income on this untapped platform. [Join 13,500+ students here.]( → [The Content Operating System](: A multi-step system for creating a high-quality newsletter and 6-12 pieces of high-performance social media content each week. [Join 5,500+ students.]( 2. Promote yourself to 115,000+ subscribers by [sponsoring this newsletter]( (Booked out 6 months) [Unsubscribe]( | Sent by Justin D Welsh LLC 30 Main Street, PO Box 448 • Accord, NY • 12404-9998