RICHARD KOCH

Those who can create wealth — and know that they can — are able to dictate their own terms.

To be strategic is to concentrate on what is important, on those few objectives that can give us a comparative advantage, on what is important to us rather than others, and to plan and execute the resulting plan with determination and steadfastness.

It may be that you will be happiest in the rat race; perhaps, like me, you are basically a rat.

There is no shortage of time. In fact, we are positively awash with it. We only make good use of 20 per cent of our time.... The 80/20 principle says that if we doubled our time on the top 20% of activities, we could work a two-day week and achieve 60 per cent more than now.

Use all the willpower at your disposal to make yourself happy. Construct the right stories about yourself - and believe them!

If we did realize the difference between the vital few and the trivial many in all aspects of our lives, and if we did something about it, we could multiply anything that we valued.

Most of us don't work out what we want. And most of us end up with lopsided lives as a result.

The road to hell is paved with the pursuit of volume. Volume leads to marginal products, marginal customers, and greatly increased managerial complexity.

Conventional wisdom is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. 80/20 wisdom is to choose a basket carefully, load all your eggs into it, and then watch it like a hawk.

Few people take objectives really seriously. They put average effort into too many things, rather than superior thought and effort into a few important things. People who achieve the most are selective as well as determined.

Hard work leads to low returns. Insight and doing what we want lead to high returns.

We tend to think of innovation as difficult, but with the creative use of The 80/20 Principle innovation can be both easy and fun!

In business the 80/20 principle is behind any innovation, any extra value. It is an entrepreneurial principle, a formula for value creation utilized not only by entrepreneurs, but by most managers and organizations.

There is no rush. If we think intelligently about what we can achieve with our time, we can be relaxed, even lazy. In fact, being lazy - having plenty of time to think - may actually be a precondition for achieving a great deal.

The key is to work out the few things that are really important, and the few methods that will give us what we really want.

Only do the thing we are best at doing and enjoy most.

What could you achieve that would make you proud, that no one else could do with the same ease?

Marketing, and the whole firm, should devote extraordinary endeavour towards delighting, keeping for ever and expanding the sales to the 20 per cent of customers who provide 80 per cent.

The 80/20 Principle, like the truth, can make you free. You can work less. At the same time, you can earn more and enjoy more. The only price is that you need to do some serious 80/20 thinking.

I make it a personal rule never to do anything that I don't really care about. It is surprising how much this cuts out.

Instead of expending time to train yourself not to be afraid of snakes, avoid them altogether.

It is not shortage of time that should worry us, but the tendency for the majority of time to be spent in low-quality ways.

Where a chunk of business is simple, the chances are that it is.

Make the choice that you want to be happy. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to other people too.