How Parkinson’s Law Makes You Unproductive, and What to Do About It
One of the best ways to maximize your productivity and performance is to plan your tasks in advance. You can do this through brainstorming , a carefully crafted daily schedule , a planning toolkit , or any other method. Unfortunately, even the best practices have a downside if taken too far.
In this case, that dark side is Parkinson’s Law, the observation that the more time you spend planning something, the longer it will take to actually do it. The truth is, you can plan, plan, and stress your way out of it. It’s always better to get difficult things done as quickly as possible , so let’s explore the pitfalls of Parkinson’s Law and how to overcome them.
What is Parkinson’s Law?
The origin of this axiom is rather amusing: Cyril Northcote Parkinson described the phenomenon in a humorous essay in The Economist in 1955 , and the authorship has been attributed to him ever since. You can read the essay in its entirety, but its main point is this: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
While the idea started out humorous, it evolved until it was studied on a more serious scale. Researchers published their findings on Parkinson’s Law in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review in 1999, finding that people tend to consider how much time is available to complete a task rather than how long it might take. Essentially, we give our future selves too much leeway in planning their schedules, and then they graciously accept all this extra time that could have been spent on something else. After all, our past selves, however wise, carved out that time for one task, and who are we to argue?
You can probably find examples of this in your life. If your boss gives you an easy task but sets a deadline for next week, are you likely to complete it right away? Parkinson’s Law catches up with me more often than I’d like to admit, especially when I’m getting ready in the morning. I used to give myself an hour to leave the house, but I’d spend it idly scrolling through my phone or just lazing around, so I started giving myself half an hour, adding the goal of drinking coffee. Essentially, I started “getting ready” at the same time every day, but with an earlier deadline and an additional task. I found that I still got things done on time, even after stopping to treat myself.
Set shorter deadlines and stick to them
Consider the example of a week allotted to completing a simple task at work. Instead of setting a goal for the week ahead and letting the task loom, choose a day when you can get it done—ideally one or two days before the deadline, so the task is fresh in your mind if you need to discuss or explain it later. Schedule a block of time to accomplish everything necessary, but allocate less time than usual. If you anticipate distractions or other issues during work, take steps (such as communicating your busy schedule ) to mitigate them rather than creating a time buffer.
This approach is helpful because it encourages you to get started quickly and not waste too much time on it. It also provides you with a kind of safety net: if you submit the work early and discover problems, you’ll have the time you saved to fix them and resubmit the work without missing the original deadline. (That’s why I always recommend setting two deadlines for any large project.)
Give yourself less time to complete tasks, not more.
As you’ve already understood, to overcome Parkinson’s Law, you need to allocate less time to tasks. Remember the Yerkes-Dodson Law , which states that for maximum productivity, you need the optimal amount of stress—not too little and not too much. When you have too much time to devote to something, you don’t have enough stress to motivate yourself.
To test this, spend a few weeks reducing the time you allot to various responsibilities. Use timeboxing to plan your entire day minute by minute, using time blocks on your calendar. If you think it will take you 30 minutes to respond to all your morning emails, allow yourself 20. If you think it will take you an hour to write reports for a large project, allow yourself 45 minutes.
When you reduce this time and understand that you have a limited time to complete a task, you’ll likely find yourself entering a state of deep work , fully focused on the task, and able to complete it systematically. This sense of urgency is the key to success.