Parkinson's Law
Ali Abdaal
???? Doctor-turned-Entrepreneur + Productivity Expert + YouTuber (5M subs) ?? Author of Feel-Good Productivity: How to Do More of What Matters to You
Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time allocated to it.
Although our true deadline for completing this project is many weeks or even months away, having such a long time to do the work is actively unhelpful. We’d put it off for ages, then we’d run into logistical issues, then some of us would be on annual leave, all while the very idea of doing the work would be a weight on our shoulders.
Instead, he suggested, we should give ourselves a self-imposed deadline of 3-7 days to complete the next steps of the project. This would avoid unnecessary time wasting, and ensure we actually get the important stuff done.
Parkinson’s Law?is useful to keep in mind in any endeavour that requires some level of work.?That work will always expand to fill the time we allocate to it. In my school and university days, when I’d give myself a whole day to get an essay done, that essay would end up taking the whole day. If however, I had social/sports stuff that day and only 2 hours to work, I’d get the essay done in that time. I suspect there wasn’t much difference in quality between the two.
领英推荐
Equally, when I give myself a whole morning to film a video, it inevitably ends up taking the whole morning with multiple takes and a tonne of procrastination. If instead I just allow myself 30 minutes to film, I naturally get it done much faster and there’s legit no difference in quality between the two modes of operation.
I came across?Parkinson’s Law?many years ago when I first started reading books about productivity. I hadn’t really thought about it for a while though, so it was useful to have the reminder from Chris to apply it to our Quality Improvement Project. I’ve now started actively thinking about the Law more often whenever I need to get something done (including this email). Hopefully you’ll find it useful too.
If you enjoy learning new stuff, you should consider joining the 90,000+ other friendly people on my?email?newsletter,????Sunday Snippets ?where I send an email every Sunday with a few thoughts, reflections, and curated links to interesting books, articles and podcasts I've enjoyed.
Ali
Otolaryngology (ENT) Resident, Clinical Tutor (Honorary) at CUHK Medicine
3 年How do you commit to that "deadline" when it's self imposed? Cause in the back of your mind, there's always that voice telling you "it's okay if you don't finish it in time - you set the deadline yourself anyway"
Master of Social Work Student @ Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work || Committed to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
3 年I never had a name for it back in high-school, but I insisted (and begged my parents) that joining extracurriculars or working wouldn't reduce the quality of work I did for school. Instead of spending hours doing nothing or wasting time "doing my assignment" I could spend that reading a book, playing sports for school, or volunteering. Towards the end of high school I managed to convince them to let me do "extra" things, and even while doing all this I still finished my schoolwork and was pleased that I did well in them. I understand that you need some good time management skills and self-control to be able to juggle different things at once and that not everyone is able to do so. So I think it's also important that we don't "shame" others for not filing up their plate to the rim like some of us. Everyone has a different understanding of "productive" ??
Physician
3 年Absolutely agree with this; When I was in medical school, I saw tonnes of pretty smart medical students preparing for the USMLE STEP 1–– part of the series of exam Foreign medical graduates need to take to get into United States postgraduate medical training, but amazingly they haven't registered for the exam yet–– no clear deadline defined, they end up not taking it because after a year of preparation they still don't seem ready. On the other hand, so-called average medical students (not high scorers in university exams) set the deadline of four to six months and end up annihilating the USMLE exams with amazing scores. ??
Manager - IT and Cybersecurity | Security+, Azure certified
3 年I was watching a course on productivity, the author mentions that to push yourself to complete a deadline make sure that you run your laptop on batteries only. When you see that you only have half an hour battery left, and start working. Your productivity increases. Hope this sort of an application of Parkinson's law.