Product Description

For modern adults, life moves on the fast track, moving from one commitment to the next with a single-minded obsession to get ahead. What remains elusive is real happiness. According to Richard Koch and Living the 80/20 Way, happiness flows from doing less, not striving more. True achievement and success can and will come from doing less. With his first mega-seller, The 80/20 Principle, Koch explains a century old economic principle called the Pareto Principle: 80 percent of results come from 20 percent of effort. The 80/20 Individual showed how to apply the 80/20 principle in the workplace. Now, Living the 80/20 Way explains how to improve the key elements of your life and take back your time. Getting more by doing less is possible. Richard Koch and Living the 80/20 Way will show you how to: -Make a good life, not just a living. - Dissociate effort from reward. Focus on the outcomes and find the easiest way to achieve them with the least amount of effort. -Do away with time management and start your own time revolution. - Get rid of your to-do list and create a not-to-do list. By following Koch’s easy steps, you will be able to find your best 20 percent and get to what matters most. Focusing your time on those things that are most important, life acquires a meaning beyond the everyday rat race of work and responsibility. Within the realms of work, money and relationships, Koch shows you how to: 1. Focus on your 80/20 destination – where you want to be 2. Find the 80/20 route – the easiest way there 3. Take 80/20 action – the first key steps

Written in easy to follow steps and full of exercises and examples, Living the 80/20 Way will help you to focus your sights on a simple, happy life. By having the courage to go against conventional wisdom, you will get more of what you want in life with less work.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31762 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 196 pages

Review
"Koch writes with inspirational verve and assurance drawing on personal experience of building businesses." -- Choice of the Month, Director Magazine

"Through multiple examples, and a punchy down-to-earth commentary, Koch offers the first really useful advice we've seen... for years." -- Business Age

About the Author
Richard Koch is a self-made millionaire and the author of thirteen books, including the international best seller, The 80/20 Principle, named one of GQ’s Top 25 Business Books of the Twentieth Century. Formerly a consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and a partner with Bain & Company, he is now a self-described "lazy entrepreneur."

Customer Reviews

Get What You Want out of Life with Less Effort and Less Time
Although I also liked his original book The 80/20 Principle, Richard Koch has done a much better job in applying Vilfredo Pareto's 80/20 principle to everyday life in Living the 80/20 Way. The 80/20 principle means that in any area of life a few (approximately 20 percent) are vital and many (approximately 80 percent) are trivial. The key is to focus your time and energy on the 20 percent of your work projects, friends, investments, and leisure activities that are really important.
As the author of the international bestseller The Joy of Not Working (over 200,000 copies sold and published in 16 languages), I can lay claim to a measure of success not attained by the majority of people in North America. In fact, not so long my net worth was minus $30,000. Yet today I have a comfortable net worth, work only four to five hours a day, and have an income in the top 20 percent of wage earners. To get there I have implemented the following principles, which in one way or another are emphasized and expanded on by Richard Koch in Living the 80/20 Way.
1. Put more effort into simplifying your life and less into complicating it.
2. Reject the adage that everything worth doing is worth doing well - striving for excellence where excellence doesn't matter is the stuff that misfits are made of.
3. Concentrate on the things that really matter and be oblivious to practically everything else.
4. If you work more than eight hours a day, you are in the wrong job - either that or you are doing it wrong.
5. The belief in the morality of hard work signifies a hard head.
6. Forget about security and focus on opportunity.
7. Live life on your own terms and not someone else's.
The material in this book can be much more valuable than an MBA if you would like to get what you want out of life without killing yourself for it. I should know. I have an MBA and have never found anything worth reviewing from the courses I took in the program. Yet I find Living the 80/20 Way a great resource for reminding me what helped me become successful. It is also a valuable reminder for how I can continue to work fewer hours than most people and be more successful at what I do than most people who work in the same field.

The 80/20 Principle made more user friendly
Having read the 80/20 Principle by the same author, I found it extremely useful for putting into words what I have been doing for years with my actions and time management. His original book is great but several of those to whom I recommended it got bored, and didn't finish it, or they couldn't see how the business principles had any practical application to their own personal lives. The author acknowledges that this is why he wrote this current book which contains much of the same information as the original but repackaged to be easier to appreciate and apply. If you haven't read either book, I'd recommend this one because it covers most of the important points from the original book, plus adds useful applications to personal life. The numerous examples and exercises will probably prove useful to many readers who want to be more gently guided through these important concepts. I will say this, I agree so much with the principles of this book, that I've been applying them in my own life for many years now, even using exercises much like those presented by Richard Koch. I teach a course entitled "Working and Playing on Purpose," in which one objective is to motivate people to apply the 80/20 rule to their lives. The 80/20 Principle and the 80/20 Way definitely work. If you will read this book, do the exercises, and take action accordingly, I'm confident that you will see a dramatic difference in your life.

80% of the information comes from the 1st (20%) book.
If you already have read the "80/20 Principle" by the same author, then this book will provide you with only 20% additional information. Mind you, the "80/20 Principle" contained 80% of the most valuable information you need to know about the 80/20 Principle. If you have yet to read the first book, however, this book will contain most of the valuable information contained in the first one and some more.

The additional 20% information is related to how you can APPLY the 80/20 principle to improve your life. Most of it is common sense, but it may help some. The author claims he wrote this book becaue one man told him he couldn't understand the 80/20 principle. If you are one of those, this book is a better read than the "80/20 Principle" since this book seems to be written for those with 8th grade reading level.