Renowned author and historian, Cyril Northcote Parkinson, once wrote:
“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
This law, or concept, is the first step in depleting the kryptonite of productivity itself, procrastination. Procrastination is your first enemy if you’re looking to be a more productive person, which is why we have concepts, or laws, such as these to keep us on our toes in the field of productivity.
This article will enlighten you with the basics of Parkinson’s Law, the history behind it, and how you can use it to earn the title of a productive person.
What is Parkinson’s Law?
This concept is all about deadlines. Deadlines are what keep us procrastinating as long as we know when they end.
Normally, if you give someone a week to do an assignment, that in reality should only take a day, they will most likely fill a lot of that time with unimportant matters. So why not give yourself a day to complete the task?
I’m talking about artificial deadlines. We allow our minds to wander on unnecessary activities because we know that we don’t have to get the work done until a far date.
The concept of Parkinson’s law is to teach people that if we give ourselves a shorter amount of time to get the work done, then we’re going to get the work done in that shorter amount of time.
Remember: work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
The idea here is to play a little pretend. Going back to the example, if we pretend that the assignment was actually due in two days (rather than a week), then we are going to make time to get the assignment done in those two days.
Who was Cyril Northcote Parkinson?
A famous British historian and author, having worked in the British Civil Service, Parkinson was more than qualified to make such a popular statement.
In 1955, Parkinson first appeared as the opening line in an article for The Economist.
In the article, he shares the story of a woman whose only task in a day is to send a postcard—a task that would take a busy person approximately three minutes. But the woman spends an hour finding the card, another half hour looking for her glasses, 90 minutes writing the card, 20 minutes deciding whether or not to take an umbrella along on her walk to the mailbox, and on and on until her day is filled.
This story, although exaggerated, is a key example of how we tend to fill our precious time with trivial matters, and more importantly how we can use Parkinson’s Law in these types of situations.
Parkinson would later become a bigger presence and would write one of many books, Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress. This book would publish in 1942, going into the depths behind his ideas and thoughts of his own law.
How to use Parkinson’s Law
Understanding Parkinson’s law is only half the battle. The most important part is that you understand how to actually crunch down your deadlines and due dates to optimize your time and productivity.
Imagine it’s the beginning of January, and you’re writing a book for which you plan to write 20 pages for by the end of the month.
How motivated would you be to get that work done right now? Not very, right?
This is because there’s no rush, plenty of time, and lots more enjoyable things to do at the moment. This lack of motivation is where you can use Parkinson’s Law.
In this example, you can use an artificial deadline to have the work done in a few weeks or even days (if you’re really that good of a writer) rather than extending the work for unnecessary periods of time.
also, remember…
It’s awesome that these deadlines are easy to use as a motivation booster, but it’s important to keep them reasonable.
If you set a deadline for yourself too soon, then you may rush through these pages, making them sloppy, and publish a substandard book. Set the deadline at a time when you think you can comfortably get your work done alongside your new motivation, without the sloppy side effects.
With Parkinson’s Law in hand, any amount of work can be reasonably done. Just as long as you know how to use it.