How to Use Parkinson’s Law to Your Advantage
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. If you’re into productivity, you’ll know this proverb as Parkinson’s Law. This interesting statement was made by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, the famous British historian and author, in 1955 – first appearing as the opening line in an article for The Economist and later becoming the focus of one of Parkinson’s books, Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress.
Parkinson was qualified to make such a statement, having worked in the British Civil Service, seeing first hand how bureaucracy ticks. Bureaucracy itself is a by-product of our culture, thanks to the limiting belief that working harder is somehow better than working smarter and faster.
Parkinson’s Law – work expands to fill the time available for its completion – means that if you give yourself a week to complete a two hour task, then (psychologically speaking) the task will increase in complexity and become more daunting so as to fill that week. It may not even fill the extra time with more work, but just stress and tension about having to get it done. By assigning the right amount of time to a task, we gain back more time and the task will reduce in complexity to its natural state.
I once read a response to Parkinson’s Law insinuating that if it were an accurate observation, one would be able to assign a time limit of one minute to a task and the task would become simple enough to complete within that minute. But Parkinson’s Law is exactly that – an observation, not some voodoo magic. It works because people give tasks longer than they really need, sometimes because they want some ‘leg room’ or buffer, but usually because they have an inflated idea of how long the task takes to complete. People don’t become fully aware of how quickly some tasks can be completed until they test this principle.
Most employees who defy the unwritten rule of “work harder, not smarter” know that, despite the greater return on investment for the company, it’s not always appreciated. That’s related to the idea that the longer something takes to complete, the better quality it must inherently be. Thankfully, the increasing trend of telecommuted employment is changing this for those lucky early adopters, but only because employers have no idea what you’re doing with all that spare time!
Let’s look at a few ways you can apply Parkinson’s Law to your life, get your to-do list checked off quicker and spend less of the work day filling in time just to look busy. This is relevant whether you work in an office or at home, since “work harder, not smarter” is a cultural idea that many individuals fall prey to even when nobody’s supervising their work.
Running Against the Clock
Make a list of your tasks, and divide them up by the amount of time it takes to complete them. Then give yourself half that time to complete each task. You have to see making the time limit as crucial. Treat it like any other deadline. Part of reversing what we’ve been indoctrinated with (work harder, not smarter) is to see the deadlines you set for yourself as unbreakable – just like the deadlines your boss or clients set.
Use that human, instinctual longing for competition that fuels such industries as sports and gaming to make this work for you. You have to win against the clock; strive to beat it as if it were your opponent, without taking shortcuts and producing low-quality output. This is particularly helpful if you’re having trouble taking your own deadlines seriously.
At first, this will be partially an exercise in determining how accurate your time projections for tasks are. Some may be spot on to begin with, and some may be inflated. Those that are spot on may be the ones that you are unable to beat the clock with when you halve the time allotment, so experiment with longer times. Don’t jump straight back to the original time allotment because there may be an optimum period in between.
If you work at a computer, a digital timer is going to be very useful when you start doing this. It’ll also save you a bit of time, because a timer allows you to see at a glance how much longer you have. Using your clock involves some addition and subtraction! There are free utilities available for OS X, Linux, and Windows.
Crush the Cockroaches of the Productivity World
Look for those little time-fillers, like email and feed reading, that you might usually think take ten or twenty (or even, god forbid, thirty!) minutes. These are the “cockroaches” of the productivity world – little pests that do nothing but make your life a pain in the backside, pains that you can’t seem to get rid no matter how much you run around the house with a shoe or bug spray.
Instead of doing the leisurely 20-30 minute morning email check, give yourself five minutes. If you’re up for a challenge, go one better and give yourself two minutes. Don’t give these tasks any more attention until you’ve completed everything on your to-do list that day, at which point you can indulge in some email reading, social networking and feed reading to your heart’s content. Not that I recommend you spend all your spare time that way!
These are tasks where 10% of what you do is important and 90% is absolutely useless. This forces you to tend to the important tasks – feeds you need to read in order to improve in your work (for instance, if you’re a web designer who needs to be read up on new practices), and emails that are actually high-priority. Experiment with how far you can take this. Make your criteria for what makes an email important, really strict and the penalties harsh! That means using the Delete button, by the way – I’m not advocating violence against your colleagues.
You can experiment with Parkinson’s Law and squashing your deadlines down to the bare minimum in many areas of your life. Just be conscious of the line between ‘bare minimum’ and ‘not enough time’ – what you’re aiming for is a job well done in less time, not a disaster that’s going to lose you employment or clients.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Joel Falconer
Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers practical advice you can use to be more efficient and effective.
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Comments
Miguel de Luis says on June 4th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Know something? I’m giving your article a try and share my findings on Friday. Expect a quick and fast comment! :)
Joel Falconer says on June 4th, 2008 at 10:42 am
Miguel, can’t wait to hear about it!
Denise says on June 4th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Oh dear what an appropriate reminder.Today I opened my email and 2 hours later I was still there! Thats all my time used up for the week.
I have told myself it was a really useful exercise though. I am in a great mastermind group at the moment and having an accountability buddy does focus the mind in getting things done.
I love your idea of seeing how fast things can get done as a way of a time and motion study. Like Miguel I will give a go for the rest of this week.
Cody Frisch says on June 4th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I am at crunch time for my finals, three projects due in 5-8 days from now, and very little is started, probably due to my subconscious knowledge it won’t take that long. But my conscious knowledge is screaming I don’t have enough time.
So I took this articles concept, and combined it with Time Striping from a week or two ago. Found out all of these projects will take less than 40 hours to complete TOTAL between all three. Thats nothing more than a standard work week. The reality is that by working 4-8 hours each day for the next 7 days, this will get each project done a day or two before its actually due.
Very interesting indeed, as I will be done working each day no later than 6pm and have the entire evening free to enjoy myself. Who’d have thunk you could have almost 48 hours of free time during your finals?
Matt @ Face Your Fork says on June 4th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I really only think tasks expand or contract based on how much room there is for goofing off or being super creative – for example, I could give myself two hours to check email and literally be done with it in 5 minutes; but on the other hand, I could give myself two hours to write a blog post and still be putting the final touches on it after 3 hours.
The “law” is too broad to be used as a blanket statement. A better, updated version of it would say that a task expands or contracts based on how much you want to get that task over with, not how much time you assign to it. ;)
Andre Kibbe says on June 4th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
DeMarco and Lister took issue with Parkinson’s “Law” in their book Peopleware, noting that software projects usual fail due to “aggressive” schedules implicitly designed to leverage PL as it’s understood in management culture. It was also noted that Parkinson wrote his observation as a humorist, not as a management theorist.
I think that for individuals, PL makes sense. For teams, there are too much coordination and too many dependencies for it to be as applicable: John has to do X before Jane can do Y, etc.
But I definitely agree that shortened deadlines are good for people to test, as long as the manufactured urgency doesn’t result in needless anxiety.
Farfield says on June 5th, 2008 at 8:08 am
How funny, I wrote an article a while ago about this too. I don’t want to advertise, but I just wanted to add this f.y.i. You can visit it by clicking on my name. Thanks!
ashley johnston says on June 5th, 2008 at 8:17 am
“one would be able to assign a time limit of one minute to a task and the task would become simple enough to complete within that minute.”
The defense against this is in the law; it _expands_ to fill, but doesn’t contract to fit.
graphic design says on June 5th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Thanks for all this input.
Miguel de Luis says on June 6th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Hi Joel,
Report fresh from the trenches.
Your new tactic has been a great success. Today I have been able to finish tasks that were due next Tuesday.
Some notes,
1.- It is not magic, it does not create more hours. You still have to choose what and how much you are going to do.
2.- I used consistently a timer (btw I found that PDA based timer is a better alternative) and it payed off. First because I found that I usually under and over-estimated the time needed for any given task. Second because it gave me a motivation to focus.
3.- Working faster than you can sustain is useless, the lack of energy wears you off soon.
4.- Instead, I found that maintaining focus is crucial.
5.- This experience has reinforced my faith in GTD. Specially in the part about not alloting time to any specific task unless it is an appointment or something that needs to be done at a special occassion.
Well, these are just my first impressions. I might deal with it later in my Spanish language blog, if that’s ok, of course.
Stanium says on June 7th, 2008 at 8:36 am
I am too one of those who suffer from Parkinson’s law :) Those little time-eaters like e-mails, instant messages, etc. are my problem too, granted I work at home. However, I’ve already prohibited myself from using mIRC “while on duty”, a little victory over lounging me :)
Shanel Yang says on June 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Great post! Having had to account for every bit of billable work time (in 6 minutes or less increments!) as a lawyer for 10 years, I can say that estimating how long a task will take is never easy. And how long a partner (supervisor) thinks a task should take is always far less time than it actually takes an associate (subordinate) to complete it. It’s a slow learning curve for all new associates. Even older associates have to start again with new learning curves with new clients, new areas of the law, etc.
But, on the plus side, due to often ridiculously tight deadlines, I learned to get things done on time, no matter what. Often, when clients waited till the last minute to seek legal counsel, getting something (anything!) filed with the court ASAP meant everything while the quality of the product meant, relatively, very little. Then, we always had time afterwards to do whatever was necessary to revise, edit, supplement that initial filing.
After railing against such deadlines for years, I finally learned the value of super-tight deadlines. Only through them was I able to learn how much I could get done in a seemingly impossible short time. Then, it dawned on me that there are many times that less-than-perfect work is not only acceptable — it’s desirable! “Good enough” became my mantra. It’s made me about 100% more productive and happy since I adopted this philosophy and it serves me especially well now that I’ve quit law to be my own boss as a blogger. Otherwise, I’d torture myself with the futile pursuit of perfection.
Joel Falconer says on June 8th, 2008 at 1:51 am
Miguel – thanks for your report! Very interesting results. Focus is certainly important, and I find it essential to use a (paper-based, IMO) task list in conjunction with tight deadlines.
John B. Kendrick says on October 13th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Great idea. I do use the timer that is built into my all electronic GTD. If I cannot act on a message within two minutes, its off to the GTD inbox for later processing.
I’ve written several posts about my experiences with GTD on my blog at http://johnkendrick.wordpress.com/how-to-gtd/ John
Kell says on October 15th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I first became aware of Parkinson’s Law when I kept an inventory of my time. I was shocked at the time spent on emails, phone calls and anything else that did not have a definite time limit.
Kell
http://www.effective-time-mana.....t-log.html
Jim Tressor says on July 30th, 2009 at 10:25 am
There are some interesting implications of Parkinson’a Law, such that businesses shouldn’t necessarily hire more workers. Here is an interesting article, however, on why Parkinson’s Law isn’t always necessarily valid: http://www.mindreign.com/en/mi.....10pn1.html