The 80 - 20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that

20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results      

Note : Pareto discovered a pattern with the ratio 80/20, but in fact, the principle can be represented in different ratios as 90/20, 60/40, and so on

• 20% of people holds 80% of cryptocurrency

• 80% of pollution originates from 20% of all factories

• 20% of drivers cause 80% of all traffic accidents

• 20% of posts generate 80% of traffic

• 20% of customers contribute to 80% of the profit

Let’s say you want to learn a new programming language and want to learn as much as possible. This can be a lot of fun and very rewarding, but it still requires effort.

• there has to be a proper mental model

• data structures and algorithms to implement

• Syntax and semantics to learn

Make a list of the concepts that you will spend the most time working on

There can be a number of things like Algorithms, paradigms such as OOPs, Recursion, control structure, Data structures, etc…

Which tasks are you doing that you know aren't creating roughly 80% of results?

Do they need to be done at all ?

By identifying your 20% and doing more of it is the only way to guarantee you'll improve your results.

Let’s say if you started learning java

• OOPs concepts such as Abstraction, Polymorphism, Inheritance, encapsulation

• Interfaces and abstract classes

• Access modifiers

• Collection / Generics

• Memory Management

• Threading

Let’s say if you started learning JavaScript

• Event Loop

• Synchronous vs Asynchronous

• Call Stack

• Closures

• Promises

• Hoisting

• Prototypes

• Scope

Think about the 80% and 20% as just indicators

It will not always be around 80 and 20, these numbers are baseline

Consider this rule as a framework to maximize your productivity

Learn how to use this principle to your advantage

It’s more about working smarter and prioritizing the right things

Hope this helps :)