Work Expands to Fill the Time Available

by Parker Houston, PsyD, ABPP, CPCC, Chief Psychologist, Department of State Hospitals

Each week, DSH's very own Parker Houston, Psy.D, ABPP, CPCC publishes a new blog post on his Lead You First website. This year, we'll be sharing those posts here on our LinkedIn page. To read more of Dr. Houston's work, visit his blog.

On November 19th, 1955, British naval historian C. Northkote Parkinson published a humorous article in The Economist with a lengthy title: Politicians and taxpayers have assumed (with occasional phases of doubt) that a rising total in the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done.

The article was a critique of the efficiency of public administration and civil service bureaucracy, and the continually rising headcount, and related cost.

(As a civil servant myself, I got a good chuckle out of this. Of course, some of these stereotypes about state workers are true, but some of the most dedicated, underpaid, and hard-working people I know—are also civil servants).

Two years later he published his best-selling book entitled Parkinson’s Law.

The subject matter of the book promoted the idea that “work expands to fill the time available.”

Have you ever felt like you had plenty of time to get something done, but despite that, noticed yourself utilizing all the time you had in order to complete something? And maybe even going past the time you had to do it?

To be clear, this is not a scientifically validated law, but rather an observation of phenomena that many leaders may have observed.

But it turns out there are a number of modern behavioral studies that do provide scientific support for Parkinson’s claim.

The dread of idle time, and need to justify being busy

Research in 2010 from the University from Chicago and Shanghai shows that people dread being idle and mostly prefer to be busy.

However, the study also showed that although people prefer to be busy, they must have a reason to justify being busy, even if that reason is weak.

They conducted several interesting experiments which I will briefly summarize, but you can read the full study here if you wish. The study is published in the journal for the Association for Psychological Science.

In one experiment, 98 college students filled out a short survey and were given the option to submit the survey in the room and then wait, or walk 15 minutes to submit the survey at a far away location. For each location, they were offered a piece of candy after they submitted the survey.

The experiment is a bit more complicated than this, but I won’t go into all the details.

They did several more experiments in order to replicate the results, which were consistent.

Here are some interesting and useful conclusions from this rather elaborate study that have implications for leadership:

• People generally prefer to be busy, but they do need a reason
• Most people will choose busyness even if the reason is weak (i.e. justifying low value work)
• Without a reason to be busy, most people will choose idleness
• Busier people generally report higher levels of happiness than idle people (unless their busyness reaches burnout levels of course)
• People want to make the decision to be busy based on principles and rules, rather than on feelings
• People who voluntarily choose busyness are happier than those who voluntarily choose idleness
• People who are forced to be busy are happier than those forced to be idle
• People who are busy without a reason are usually miserable (think of Sisyphus)
• Idle people are more likely to engage in destructive busyness (think of your kids or criminal behavior)

The notion that people dread idleness and desire busyness is consistent with many other studies including research showing that people dread boredom (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi,2000; Fahlman, Mercer, Gaskovski, Eastwood, & Eastwood, 2009; Mikulas & Vodanovich, 1993; Smith, 1981),that waiting is aversive (e.g., Larson, 1987; Robbins, 1978),that work is perceived as virtuous (e.g., Furham, 1982; Merrens & Garrett, 1975; Neff, 2006), and that labor leads to appreciation (Norton, 2009).

The psychological drivers listed above all help people justify low value busywork. But there is a better way.

“Never confuse activity with accomplishment.” –Brian Tracy

Take action now

So now that you know this, what can you do for yourself or your team?

1. Recognize that the brain will attempt to justify low value work. Our brain will often default to whatever is easy and often choose to do that work first, or fill up our days with low value work. Numerous studies have supported this. Watch yourself and notice when you are working on tasks that you have clearly identified as less important…like checking email 25 times a day.
2. Clearly identify the most important results your team needs to produce, and then select tasks that clearly support them. Make sure you and your team have identified the most important outcomes and the work that supports them, then make sure that work takes priority.
3. Pick one or two high-impact tasks every day, and do those things first, with intensity and focus. This provides a momentous feeling every day of having accomplished something impactful. Save low-value but necessary tasks for later in the day whenever possible. Model this yourself and teach your teams to do the same.
4. You can “force” people to be appropriately busy, but make sure the work is meaningful. You don’t want your team to be so busy that they are burned out, but neither do you want them to be idle. You can use a business plan and meet with your team members regularly to ensure they are appropriately busy and focused on meaningful tasks.
5. Set self-imposed time constraints for yourself, and reasonable deadlines for your team. When you do this, you can help yourself and your team beat the pitfall of Parkinson’s law where work expands to fill time available. It may actually increase stress for your team or result in wasted time when you don’t set clear deadlines.
6. As the leader, make sure you help people understand the meaning of their jobs. It’s your job as the leader to help people see how their work is meaningful. Remind them of their importance to the mission or the big picture, no matter how small their task is. This helps prevent burnout and destructive busyness.

“Busyness is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.” –Tim Ferriss

Have a great weekend!

-Parker

Opinions expressed are the author's own.