Understand Parkinson's Law to Have More Time
What if the time you set to complete a task will determine the time you will spend working on it?
This week, I read an article dealing with productivity and time management. In this article, we could read an unusual sentence stating that "unconsciously" humans take as much time as they have to complete a task.
It comes from an observation from British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkison who wrote: "It is a commonplace observation that work expands to fill the time available for its completion." in an essay for The Economist in 1955. Almost sixty years later, the concept is still up to date.
In his satirical essay, Parkinson uses the example of an elderly lady writing a postcard to her niece. Since she has nothing else to do, this simple task takes up her entire day.
Can 'threatening' deadlines put an end to laziness?
Studies in the decades of Parkinson's essay have shown that it has some merit. In the 1960s, researchers showed that when subjects were "accidentally" given extra time to complete a task, they took more time. The researchers also found that additional time spent on one assignment did not increase accuracy or improve the work on a test.
Does this mean I should set deadlines earlier or limit the work I put into each task? As a whole, should we impose stricter time constraints on ourselves to improve productivity?
Working as an Investment Banker pulling long hours, I have to manage my time efficiently to deliver on time and have a personal life. On this job, you often receive multiple assignments with excessively tight deadlines, which forces you to be faster and better organised.
Let's deep-dive into two real-life examples.
My first example would be one time I faced a tight deadline.
One day, I had to put together a 40-page deck in three days from scratch with little guidelines for a client meeting. At first, I told myself that I would never be able to do it and that I should instead ask for additional time. Unfortunately, we could not postpone the meeting, and I had no choice but to put together a well-crafted action plan.
Please find below a summary of my 10-step action plan:
Leverage prior work from colleagues - 2 hours
Draft a shell including the content of each slide - 2 hours
Divide the tasks with external support - 1 hour
Draft Section 1 - 15 hours
Draft Section 2 - 12 hours
Draft Section 3 - 12 hours
Review and adjust the work received from external support - 2 hours
Share the first draft with managers
Pray not to receive too many comments
Have a well-deserved sleep
With this experience, I understood that anything was possible with the appropriate organisation. I also realised the importance of setting deadlines in life, as it allows us to be prepared mentally for the end of a task which is crucial to design an action plan.
My second example would be one time I faced an extended deadline.
One day, I received an assignment for a new project for which we had three weeks to prepare a 30-page deck. At first, I was thrilled to have that much time to do it, but after a few days, I regretted not having a tighter deadline. In the end, there were more than 30 different versions because the managers had more time to brainstorm and doubt. It was not efficient. First, because the changes requested made me waste a lot of time as I would work on 5-10 slides for a week, then receive a comment stating: "remove slides". Overall, the quality of the work was not better, and I spent 5x the amount of time I had to draft the 40-page deck (from the first example).
The two examples above illustrate Parkinson's Law perfectly because no matter how much time you have to complete a task, the deadline you set will be the one by which you finalise it.
Setting deadlines is crucial to be efficient and more time does not always rhyme with better quality. Although, there is always the chance that rushing to accomplish something in too few hours can have drawbacks, especially if someone else decides your deadline.
Who knows? Maybe if I had put a tighter deadline, I would have finalised this article earlier. Next time, I will, and you should also do so to achieve more and stop procrastinating. I hope you will find this article useful.
Have a great week!
Isaac
Stuff I liked this week
Technology - ChatGPT: New AI chatbot has everyone talking to it - A new chatbot developed by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research firm whose founders included Elon Musk.
Self-development - Building A Self-Development Business That Prioritizes Education - The importance of normalising mental health issues as equivalent to physical health concerns is a topic spilling from our classrooms to boardrooms