Parkinson’s Law means that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
Imagine you have two weeks to complete a project.
How likely would you deliver the task earlier than the deadline? If your answer is not likely, you’re not alone.
Because even if the project with a two-week deadline could be finished in three days, you’d still tend to use all the time you have. And the additional time you spend wouldn’t even improve the quality of the work.
Hence, people waste a lot of time and effort –without realizing it– to get the same outcomes. Over the long term, these losses make you a less effective person.
Two tips to overcome Parkinson’s Law:
1- Divide the work into smaller pieces
You cannot accurately estimate how much time you need to finish a big project. But you can do it for specific tasks.
So cut big chunks of work into smaller pieces.
Estimating the time required for “starting a business” is hard. But it’s easy to estimate for creating a website, incorporating a company, and hiring an accountant.
That way, you’ll find out the actual time you need rather than depending on an imaginary estimate that is likely to cost you time.
2- Set a challenging deadline:
Elon Musk uses this technique quite often.
He takes a big idea (self-driving cars, going to Mars, or providing internet access from satellites) and sets an almost impossible deadline for his team to achieve it.
They work with full intensity to solve that problem to stick to the target date.
Yes, they sometimes miss deadlines as they are trying to do things that have never been done before.
But they achieve the impossible-looking things before anybody else thanks to the tight deadlines.
You are probably not trying to send a reusable rocket to Mars.
From starting a business example, let’s say the deadline you set for yourself is six months.
Can you do that in two months instead? Can you do it in three weeks?
In most cases, you’ll realize it’s possible. Even the way you approach the problem will change when you limit the time.
Time is our biggest constraint in life.
Becoming aware of Parkinson’s Law and overcoming it will make you achieve more while leaving time for your other priorities.
Ask yourself:
Imagine you could finish every task or project in your life 2x-3x faster with the same quality.
What difference would it make in your life in five years?
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