This is exactly what I'm thinking

It's better to be in the right place than to be smart and work hard.

In 1963, IBM discovered that about 80 per cent of a computer’s time is spent executing about 20 per cent of the operating code. The company immediately rewrote its operating software to make the most used 20 per cent very accessible and user friendly, thus making IBM computers more efficient and faster than competitors’ machines for the majority of applications.

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.

Work Less, Earn and Enjoy More shows how the 80/20 Principle can be used to raise the level at which you are operating in both your work and personal life.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
------ George Bernard Shaw

You have to work out your own uses for the principle: they will be there if you look creatively.

Never read a book from cover to cover, except for pleasure. When you are working, find out what the book is saying much faster than you would by reading it through. Read the conclusion, then the introduction, then the conclusion again, then dip lightly into any interesting bits.
What he was really saying was that 80 percent of the value of a book can be found in 20 percent or fewer of its pages, and absorbed in 20 percent of the time most people would take to read it through.

No doubt 80 per cent of the money to be had by people of my tender age was concentrated in 20 per cent of the jobs.