In this video you'll learn how to use the Parkinson's Law to your advantage and manage your time more effectively thanks to it.
Video by BetterThanYesterday
Key Takeaways
Parkinson’s Law The law states this: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
- If someone gives you one week to mow their lawn, it will take you a whole week to do it.
- If they give you one month, it will take you one month.
- And if they give you one year to do it, god forbid, it will take you one whole year.
Essentially the more time you have to complete something, the longer it will take you to finish it.
And the less time you have to complete your goal, the more likely it is that you’ll complete it in proposed time.
But if a goal or a task does not have a specific deadline set, it will most likely never get done.
Whenever we have something we want to complete, whether it’s an essay for school, or mowing the lawn for someone, we make the mistake of thinking that the more time we give ourselves to complete it, the better the end result will be.
However more often that not, most of that time is spent procrastinating and only a small portion of it is spent on the thing we want to achieve.
- If someone gave you one month to mow their lawn, it would probably take you 29 days before you even began, simply because you know it could be completed in one day. So that’s 29 days of procrastinating, because you know you have more than enough time, before you get started.
- The same thing happened with my high school essay. Most of the month was spent doing other things and only a small portion of the time was spent on writing. If I was given a week instead of one month to write that same paper, I would have finished it in one week.
You can think of a deadline, as a fire. When the deadline is far away, that fire is small. It doesn’t threaten your life yet, that’s why you don’t extinguish it right away. But instead you focus on other things.
However as the deadline gets closer and closer, that fire gets bigger and bigger. What eventually happens is that the initially small fire has gotten so big, that your whole house might burn down.
And now you obviously don’t have a choice but to extinguish it as fast as possible. So that becomes your primary focus.
When your house is burning down you don’t procrastinate and waste your time on unimportant things.
You don’t check email for just 10 minutes. You don’t have a quick scroll though Twitter or Instagram. Nor do you think about playing video games. No, those things that usually make up a huge part of your procrastination, become secondary and unimportant.
Instead, extinguishing that fire becomes your number one priority.
In other words, because your deadline is so close, or because the fire is so big, you prioritize your tasks much better. You can’t afford to procrastinate or get lost in unimportant details, like most people tend to do. Instead you’re fully focused on that fire.
The Parkinson’s Law is important to be conscious about, from the time management perspective. If you know something can be completed in a day, don’t give yourself two days to finish it.
You might think that giving yourself extra time will get you better results. However as I’ve pointed out, most of the time is wasted on unimportant things. And the end result of a shorter deadline is actually often times better, because you’re not distracted and you have greater focus.
However you should be reasonable with the time frame of the deadlines. If you know something will take a week to complete, don’t set the deadline for tomorrow. This may sound obvious, but it is something people do when they first hear about the Parkinson’s Law.
However you can still try to push the limits of what is possible, and maybe you’ll find some shortcuts along the way. Worst case scenario is you get some work done, but you need to give it a polish.
Now, whether your deadline is too short or too far away, it’s still better than no deadline at all. Remember, if there is no deadline, your goal will probably never be achieved. So if you don’t have a fire that’s getting bigger, make sure you create one.