Most of us spend our lives overwhelmed by a deluge of tasks to do, jobs to accomplish and duties to fulfil. An entire industry of time management books and tapes has grown up to help us cram ever more into our crowded work and lives. However recent thinking in the personal productivity industry has focused on doing not more but less. Instead of an endless and frenetic merry-go-round of activity, the focus is now on achieving the “vital few” things that really matter.

One of the pioneers of this school of thinking has been Richard Koch, whose ground-breaking and revolutionary book “The 80/20 Principle” has enabled millions to focus on the few things that really matter. His great insight is the work of the nineteenth century Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who discovered that 80% of the land in England was owned by only 20% of the people. This insight proved to be widely applicable across different fields of society, nature and history, so that it can reasonably be assumed that 80% of results in any given system or process derive from just 20% of causes.

Koch recommends a “time revolution” based on a “lazy entrepreneur’s” way of thinking, where more and more activity is not necessarily best. Hi ideas achieved widespread popularity in the Nineties and beyond and been adopted by “lifestyle entrepreneurs” such as Tim Ferriss of “Four Hour Work Week” fame. He argues that we should only focus on what really matters, and schedule short deadlines for their completion. The same ideas have been embraced by Leo Babuta of the top blog “Zen Habits”. In his fascinating and helpful book “The Power of Less”, he challenges the conventional wisdom of “more is better” and shows that focus on the “vital few” is the path to a happier life.

The information revolution has multiplied choices and given us enormous power, but it is truly a double-edged sword. In Babuta’s words, we need to stop “drinking from a fire hose of information” and focus again on what really matters.