It includes variety of areas of human's activity, behaviors and attitude, but in short it translates to one fact: there are those who are passive watchers - and they constitute 80% of the earth's population - and those who are active doers - and they constitute the remaining 20%. All remaining "20% versus 80%" relations are the result of this basic relation dividing people into two categories.

For instance, 80% of national revenue of a country is produced by 20% of its population, and only 20% by the remaining 80%.

Another example: of the things you do during your day, only 20% really matter, and those 20% produce 80% of your results, so it would be useful to identify those things and focus on them.

Of course, although we can observe this rule in most of the life situations, it is just a general observation and there can be exceptions.

For instance, it has been observed that 80% of company sales come from 20% of its sales force, but there are businesses that have a great sales team where everybody contributes almost equally to the company's profit. So, it is good to realize if this rule applies to a given situation, and if it does, to take it into consideration for our advantage.