Parkinson’s Law: Getting more work done in less time
What is Parkinson’s Law:
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” – Parkinson’s Law.
The above statement says that “If you have one month to complete something, you will take one month to get it done. If you have one week, you will take one week, and if you have one day, you will take one day”. And, the more time you have for the task completion, the more humongous it seems to appear. This law can be applied for almost any task, under reasonable limits, of course.
Try remembering the times when you procrastinated knowing you have enough time to complete some tasks. Like having more than enough days for exam preparation or assignment submission. In most cases, you wasted all the time you had and seriously started working only at the last moment. It is a natural human tendency. Alternatively, the times when you had less than the required time, you still somehow completed the task at hand. Parkinson’s law addresses this propensity of humans.
How to use this law to your advantage:
Now you know what Parkinson’s law is. To use this knowledge to our advantage, we have to generate artificial deadlines for our tasks consciously. It will create a sense of urgency, thereby allowing us to get more things done in less time.
Understanding Parkinson’s law and using this in accordance with a daily planner (see here) will multiply your productivity by many folds.
A New Perspective:
A few years back, I found out a different interpretation of this law. Which is, “5 hours of preparation, distributed across the week prior to the test is better than 10 hours of preparation a day before the test.” Allow me to explain why I came to this conclusion of mine.
An Experience from the past:
During my 3rd semester at IIT, I was an Overall Assessment Coordinator (OAC), a post from the campus Placement Office. The responsibility of an OAC is to conduct personal interviews and group discussions for final year students. Professional panellists were hired to assess the students and train them for upcoming campus placements. I, along with my colleague, had to conduct assessments for over 800 students. For the assessment process to run smoothly, we had to work for about 13 hours every day for the next two weeks.
Along with my OAC responsibilities, I also had to work on my Master’s Project and attend classes. During that time, I was swamped and hardly getting four hours of sleep. Then, I was informed that I had to take three tests the next week. Two of which were related to semester courses, another was for the Latex software course completion certificate.
I was scared. I was hardly getting time to sleep, how can I prepare for the test? I thought I was bound to fail.
But something amazing happened.
See, I had this habit of listening to audiobooks, when I walk to class when I have my lunch. Whenever I find myself doing trivial tasks, I plugged in my headphones and started listening to my favourite books. Those days, I was listening to an audiobook titled, “How to Become a Straight-A Student” by Cal Newport. The book talks about time management for University students. This book gave me new insights. My article “Plan Your Day” discusses the planning mechanism which was evolved from the Idea I got in this book.
Enlightened by that book, I was determined to make things work even in that tight schedule. I opened my daily planner, created my weekly planner for the first time in my life. I searched my google calendar for my available free slots to prepare for my upcoming tests. Finally, I managed to study for a mere 3 to 4 hours for each of those three courses.
I was hoping that I could get passing marks. But to my surprise, I got the highest marks in the class all three courses.
I prepared for the least amount of time, but still ended up with my best performance!.
Did I find what smart work looks like? This was a revelation for me.
Explanation:
“5 hours of preparation, distributed across the week prior to the test is better than 10 hours of preparation a day before the test.”
I did some research to know how does the above statement holds so strong. In the above statement, although we actively learn for 5 hours, our brain continually works on what we are learning. When you sleep, during your shower, while running to the class you are late for, and while having your favourite chocolate milkshake, know that your subconscious mind is at work. Also, the concept of “compound effect” is at play here, which I will cover in the future topic. Therefore, the amount of time you actually spent learning is way longer than those 5 hours of actively learning.
On the other hand, let’s be realistic, how much of the last-minute binge studying you think you are effectively learning? It seems like you are doing a lot of hard work, but in reality, it is dumb work.
Now that I know how to carve out time even when it seems impossible; When I hear someone saying, “I don’t have time.” I feel pity for them. They have no idea how to use time. But I won’t blame them, because even I had no idea about it. I educated myself by reading, like how you are doing right now. I wish you to gain from my insights.
Take Away:
- Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion
- Create artificial deadlines for your tasks
- Do not set unreasonable deadlines
- Use this in accordance with your daily planner
- Do smart work
People always say “Do smart work.” but they never say how to do it. I hope now you will be able to say how to do smart work.
Bye 🙂
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