Pareto Principle & Pomodoro technique

I am re-reading John Doerr's classic "Measure what matters" in which he brilliantly teaches using case examples of how OKR's  (Objectives and Key results) work and how to go about implementing them. At work, we in the throes of finishing the annual performance appraisals; secretly, everybody loathes the exercises, both supervisors and supervised. It's merely an HR administrative activity to file more things in the holy grail of increasing paper management. Even with the redesign of the tool and the coaching approach in my view, no significant urgency, shift, or movement of the organizational dial moving forward happens. There are certainly some functional aspects of it, but the tool I often wonder is an administrative chore that people go through. This annual instrument fails at linking strategies, efforts of individuals, and the alignment of goals to the overall objectives of the organization. This often leads to some people working too hard and others showing up because they have a job and not making any connection of their daily tasks and projects to the overall objectives and strategies of the organization.

Italian philosopher and economist Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto left us with the Pareto's Principle when he found that 20 percent of the pea plants in his garden produced 80 percent of his healthy produce. Pareto extrapolated the principle calling it the 80/20 rule now attributed to him and applied in many areas of social sciences. For example, using 80/20 rule to your employees say, lead generators or salespeople, you will quickly find the data outlining most of them should be let go. I have been tracking rigorously on a simple spreadsheet all the activities I do for work, personal development, business, and family, and surprisingly identifying in my weekly reviews its 20 percent of the events that result in potential impact in the current and future. It's finding the mix of leveraging your skills and delegating the tasks or even better automating the tasks you can in each area. This eventually leads to the question of time management and where your energies need to get focussed. Productivity then has correlations with focus and energy, which then has an impact on time management.

The Pomodoro technique developed by Francesco Cirillo is a method designed to reduce distractions and boost productivity. I have experimented on this for the last few years to reach my monthly and yearly book reading targets. I set 30 min timers and measure how many chapters I can speed read and boil it down to common words or chapters I have to read to keep track of peaks and valleys and straight lines. The more consistent consecutive lines, I have a better statistic of reading more chapters and eventually reading more books. The other area I have observed by shuffling time is discovering or searching for dead time zones (an example would be driving for 30 mins to work). The secret is learning how to maximize and turn those dead time into and audio activity or even relaxing with zero zoning thoughts or taking a break from mental activity and just enjoy the being.