4. Stop Doing 80% of the Stuff You Do
If you want to work less and make more money, you’ve got to leverage the power of the 80/20 rule. This is called Pareto’s Principle and it demonstrates that in most things you do, 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.
It can be pretty powerful. But it also means that only 20% of your results come from 80% of your efforts. Ouch.
Success with the Pareto Principle comes in two simple steps:
First, eliminate 80% of all your hard work. Cut out unnecessary meetings. Filter out unwanted emails. Outsource or delegate unimportant tasks.
Then, scale up the remaining 20%. Identify what’s really driving results in your life, job, or business, and do MORE of that with the time you’ve just unlocked.
What does this look like in principle? Let’s say you’ve just started freelancing as a dog walker, and you charge your 10 clients $20 per dog.
Pretty soon you realize that 8 of your clients have just one dog and are paying you $20/walk while the others each own a dog shelter with 10 dogs each. They’re each paying $200/walk.
Twenty minutes is twenty minutes, whether you’ve got 1 dog on a leash or 10. You work less and make more money with the 20% of clients with 10 dogs.
So what’s the smart thing to do?
You drop all 8 of those single dog owners, quit taking new clients with only one dog, and start looking for just one more client that has at least 8. She’s harder to find, but you’ve got plenty of time now because you just dropped 80% of your commitments and didn’t lose much, relatively.
Whether you have a full-time job, a side hustle, or your own business, chances are 80% of your results currently come from stuff you spend 20% of your time on. One of the quickest ways to work less and make more money is to cut out the 80% of tasks you simply don’t get your best results from.
5. Move Somewhere That’s Cheaper to Live & Work
Most people who feel stuck in their job feel stuck because of bills. Rent, mortgage, car payment, debt repayment, utilities, internet, phone bills, and the list goes on.
Imagine for a moment that you’re living in New York City or San Francisco (two of the most expensive cities to live in at the time of writing).
Now, imagine you can convince your boss to let you work from anywhere you want as long as you get your work done. If you’re not sure how to do this, read Tim Ferris’ landmark book, The Four-Hour Workweek.
Why not pick up your laptop, move out of that tiny NYC apartment, and move to somewhere infinitely more beautiful and much cheaper? There are dozens of great options in industrialized, modern cities at a fraction of the price.
Places like Cambodia, Thailand, Mexico, Argentina, or Peru offer beautiful scenery, kind people, and a MUCH lower cost of living.
With all the money you save, you could invest more, work fewer hours, or start your own business.
Yes, it’s hard to move away from what you know—and possibly people you care about. This tip definitely isn’t for everyone, especially if you LOVE living in the big city with your friends and family.
But if you want to work less and make more money, you have to consider just how much of your hard-earned cash is getting eaten up by everyday expenses.
Self-made entrepreneur Sean Ogle got fed up with his corporate job in finance and wanted to do some traveling. When his boss turned down his proposal to work remotely, he quit.
He had some savings, but not enough to make it for long with a home base in Portland, so he bought a 1-way ticket to Bangkok and set up shop over there, where it’s far cheaper to live—geo-arbitrage.
Sean found a part-time gig when he got over there, and after 6 months of hanging out in Thailand and visiting the rest of Southeastern Asia, he came home with the same amount of money that he left with.
Free 6-month vacation. Nice.
No matter how you look at it, there are ways around paying your bills and being stuck in your same clock-in, clock-out routine every day.
Understand and Leverage the Motivations of Others
Let me introduce you to a guy named Matt. By age 25, Matt had worked his way into an executive finance position with UPS, and at the age of 26, he said goodbye to that job in order to double his salary and move to Europe and work at a tech company.
To achieve such a salary so early in life, you might think Matt sleeps under his desk at night.
Not so. He really doesn’t work that much harder than anyone else with a little ambition.
So how did he work his way up the ladder so fast? Here’s exactly what Matt said about working less and making more:
“I focus on figuring out how systems work and where people’s motivations are coming from. Understanding how and why something works the way it does is amazingly powerful.
“This is my fundamental starting point for working smarter. Investing the time to build relationships, dissect processes, and ask why builds a solid platform to base all other activities off of.”
Here’s a guy who makes well over $100,000 a year, and the #1 thing he does to be effective at his job is understand others’ motivations.
How much further could you get in your own career or business if you spent less time on menial tasks and more time understanding the motivations of your boss, coworkers, customers, or clients?
7. Get a More Flexible Job so You Can Focus on High-Impact Work
If you’re in a job where your boss expects you to be in a chair every minute of every day, you’re just never going to be able to work less and make more money.
If you have to clock in and clock out and perform menial tasks the entire time between, then it’s time to switch to a more flexible job so you can focus on high-impact work.
People who work less and make more money are the people who identify the most important work (either what their boss cares most about or what drives the most revenue for their own business) and put the bulk of their effort into it.
If the 2020 pandemic taught us anything about work, it’s that you don’t have to be physically present at your job in order to be productive.
Study after study shows that employees who work from home are almost always more productive.
Why? Because when we’re free to choose our schedule and daily tasks, we prioritize the most important things, get them done, and then move on with life.
No more playing solitaire until 5 pm just so your boss can see you in your seat. No more eating lunch at your desk in order to appear busy.
If your job isn’t flexible enough to allow you the freedom to work less and make more money by prioritizing the most important tasks, then you should seek out a new job. I recommend looking into jobs at ROWE companies (Results Only Work Environment).
At a ROWE company, no one cares how many hours you put in or when you put them in. They only care about results.
And when your boss only cares about results, you’ve made a good step toward working less and making more money.
If you are your own boss, consider what work actually has to be done by YOU and which tasks you can outsource or delegate. Focus on getting the most important work done, and your business will thrive.
Even a “side hustle” like a YouTube channel can yield huge results. Meet a couple that has seen incredible results but is still struggling to find balance in their relationship.
