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1.2 How to Use Parkinson’s Law to Your Advantage

1.2.1 1. Create Artificial Deadlines

1.2.2 2. Track Your Time

1.2.3 3. Use the Pomodoro Technique

1.2.4 4. Create Incentives to Meet Your Goals

1.3 Conclusion

Time Management and Parkinson’s Law

Time management is one of the biggest challenges we face. For it, we blame all sorts of things including procrastination, distractions, heavy workload and so on. But the truth is that our struggle with time management is almost entirely self-inflicted. Parkinson’s law is a psychological concept that explains why you are most likely the reason for your time management woes. The law simply says that work expands to fill in whatever time we allocate to it. You can use the knowledge and understanding of Parkinson’s law to boost productivity. We will show you how in this article.

What is Parkinson’s Law?

The law first appeared in an essay in the London ‘Economist’ in 1955. The essay was written by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, an author and historian. We credit him for coming up with the now-famous dictum that “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” This phenomenon is explained as such, you get more time to carry out a task that you can complete in less time. Then the task will psychologically increase in complexity and you will find that the task took you as long as the extra time. Sometimes it even extends beyond your deadline.

Sometimes people give more time to tasks than they need because they have no idea how long the work takes minus distractions. Other times, they use it as a contingency plan in case of unplanned events that could delay the work. The point is that your mind picks up the time you have set and makes it take that long. We do not fill the extra hours with productive work, it’s often just distractions, worry and over planning.

Parkinson’s law is not to say that if you allocate 5 minutes to deep clean your house, do laundry, go grocery shopping then it will all happen in 5 minutes. What we should do is assign the barest minimum amount of time to a task. The task will seem less complex and we can save time. So, you can get that task done in a week or three days, you decide.

How to Use Parkinson’s Law to Your Advantage

A lot of people are not fully aware of how quickly and productively they can work until they put Parkinson’s law to the test. Here are four ways you can use this law to boost productivity.

1. Create Artificial Deadlines

For every task you get, a deadline accompanies it. To leverage Parkinson’s law, reduce the timeframe by a couple of hours or cut the time in half. Even if the task is one you have imposed on yourself and has no consequential deadline, create one for yourself. And stick to the deadline no matter what.

When creating these deadlines, be realistic about your physical limitations as a human. But be sure that you do not give room for procrastination. Make the artificial timeline believable by putting it down on your to-do, sticky notes and reminders. When you set your deadline, you convince your mind to accomplish the work within the timeframe.

2. Track Your Time

If you are to get better at time management, you should at least be able to account for how you spend your time. To know exactly how long your task takes to complete minus distractions, you can use time tracking software to measure the amount of time activities take. With the data you get, you can realistically schedule your activities. Take some time to collect data so that you have enough information to work with.

Time tracking can help you measure your efficiency, it also helps identify distractions that are draining your productive time. Consistent time tracking can help you figure out time-wasting processes that can be optimized. There are more than a few online time tracking tools like Timely, Toggl and Clockify that you can use.

3. Use the Pomodoro Technique

Pomodoro is a popular time management trick that has been used since the 1980s. The technique is quite simple to use. What you need to do is break up your schedule into segments. You allocate 25 minutes for work which is followed by a 5 or 15-minute break and repeat. To get the Pomodoro technique working for you, you need to break up your project into small steps. If the steps are small enough, every 25 minutes could see you completing a small milestone.

You don’t need to keep your eye on the clock all day, there are plenty of timer apps to help you. Nowadays, there are dozens of apps and online timers such as the Pomodoro Technique, Marinara Online Timer, etc. You can also use your kitchen timer or mobile phone alarm. Be careful using your phone though, as it can easily distract you with notifications and such.

4. Create Incentives to Meet Your Goals

We often hear that the reward for good work is more work but that can get demotivating. There should be more than just more tasks waiting for you and your team after hitting each goal. The promise and delivery of a reward make work a lot more fun to do. If you reward quality and speed, you will inspire yourself and your team to be more productive.

Reward yourself with something that won’t negate productive progress. Watching a Netflix series all night when you have work the next day is not a good idea for a reward. Instead, take a long leisurely walk, go shopping, order or make your favorite meal or book a weekend trip.

Conclusion

Parkinson’s law does not call for you to put undue pressure on yourself. Instead, it should motivate you to critically examine your current time management practices. If you find room for improvement, then you ought to leverage the law so that you do more in less time.

Check out this in-depth article from lifehack.org on Parkinson’s Law. by clicking here . It’s a great read, and we borrowed their graph so show them some love and visit them !