Parkinson's Law

Let’s talk about the Parkinson’s Law and the best way to explain Parkinson’s Law is our good friend

Wikipedia.

See I didn’t make this up.

This is an actual law.

ANDY PARK It’s the law states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

What does that mean.

Well you may have experienced this when working on a project or in school where you leave things until

the very last minute and then right at the end you start working really really hard and then you finish

the work.

Parkinson’s law is that idea that you usually finish a project or task based on how much time you’re

given.

So if you’re given a week to finish a project it will take you a week to finish a project.

If you’re given 24 hours to finish a project then you’re going to take 24 hours to finish a project.

We look at deadlines as the.

This is when I have to finish it by.

So sometimes if the task only requires minimal effort we wait until the very end.

Especially for those that are prone to procrastinate.

So how can we use Parkinson’s Law to our advantage.

Well this is where techniques like Pomodoro technique work right.

We say Hey I give myself a realistic timeline to finish a task.

You only have twenty five minutes to work on this.

That’s a small amount of time that I can focus.

I can say hey I’m going to not check my phone for twenty five minutes.

I’m not going to check my email for twenty five minutes.

That’s a workable chunk in the same way we can create these deadlines of our systems and goals.

Maybe we are planning our goals and systems for the new year or for the entire year.

We can set achievable timeframes and deadlines so that we constrain ourselves within the Parkinson’s

Law if we try and time all our goals so that hey just by the end of this year you have to finish all

of these.

We’re not going to get as much done because we’re going to drag on everything until the very end because

we have these time frames instead by using small little systems and goals with specific deadlines or

when we want to accomplish something by if forces ourself to put in the work within those constrained

timeframes.

That’s why to do lists work what’s your To Do list for today.

That’s your timeframe today 24 hours.

Go for a run for 10 minutes today.

That is a constraint.

However make a million dollars.

That is probably not a good goal.

With not enough constraints.