Richard Koch Quotes

80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. A few things are important; most are not.

Strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many.

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.

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.

The few things that work fantastically well should be identified, cultivated, nurtured, and multiplied.

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

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.

To get useful new ideas, we must go beyond our immediate circle and make contact with distant parts of the social system.

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.

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.

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.

The 80/20 principle - that 80 percent of result flow from just 20 per cent of the causes - is the one true principle of highly effective people.

Laziness is the road to progress, but only when it is allied to intelligent thought and high ambition.

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.

Celebrate exceptional productivity, rather than raise average efforts.

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

If a species is diverse, it can survive and prosper. If a species is homogeneous, it is vulnerable.

Creation occurs when ideas and individuals collide and collude.

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.

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

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.

It is not that we are short of time....It is the way that we treat time, even the way that we think about it. A time revolution..is the fastest way to make a giant leap in both happiness and effectiveness.

Progress is personal; it comes from individuals demanding more of themselves and everyone else.

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

Chose the niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming and acknowledged leader.