Parkinson's Law: Why You’re Always Busy and What to Do About It
Reclaim Your Day, One Task at a Time
In this issue:
What is Parkinson’s Law?
Parkinson’s Law in Action
The Psychology Behind Parkinson’s Law
Countering Parkinson’s Law
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Download the Countering Parkinson’s Law Worksheet
Complementary Frameworks
Recommended Resources
Final Thoughts
✨
99% of humans suffer from a disease of the mind.
This disease is called procrastination.
Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993) was a British naval historian, and in the 1955 edition of The Economist he published an essay which stated that:
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
A couple of years later, Parkinson published his most famous book (of 60 odd books), titled Parkinson’s Law (1957), which further advanced the idea he proposed in his essay.
In this article, we will discuss this idea and its implications for general productivity, management, and leadership, as well as strategies that you can use to counter it.
Are you ready to take control of your time? Let’s do this.
What is Parkinson’s Law?
Parkinson’s Law states that the amount of work required adjusts to the time available for its completion.
This adjustment often leads to a loss of time, as tasks that could be completed quickly are pushed out unnecessarily.
While not a scientific principle, it has been tested to be true as it closely follows the human tendency to procrastinate. It reflects the tendency of us, humans, to expand tasks to fill the entire allotted time, regardless of the actual amount of work needed.
Another, adapted version of the law states that:
The longer you set a deadline for a given task, the more work you will end up doing to accomplish it.
And what happens when something gets delayed? The task becomes even more daunting, requiring more mental energy.
And guess what, the ‘extra time’ that that task requires is often related to the mental stress caused by worrying about getting it done, and not the task itself.
Parkinson’s Law in Action
Now, let’s look at a few common examples of the law in action. Are you ready to be surprised?
School Assignment
Remember when you were in high school or university, and you had to prepare and submit an assignment?
The teacher gave you a deadline of 3 weeks, and the students could have completed and submitted sooner - say in one week or two weeks.
But more than 90% of your classmates submitted it in exactly 3 weeks. Hours, sometimes, minutes before the deadline.
How big of a coincidence is that? How did the teacher know that most students would need exactly 3 weeks?
Now imagine if instead the teacher had given you 2 weeks to complete the same assignment. What do you think would have happened? You guessed it right - most students would still have completed it just in time.
That is Parkinson’s Law in action.
Meetings
Arguably the biggest drainer of work time is meetings. Meetings are notorious for running longer than necessary.
Have you wondered how meetings that are set for an hour end up consuming exactly one hour? And this happens regardless of the list of agenda topics or how quickly you can get through the agenda.
Now for those rare situations where have a super efficient meeting, and you have ten minutes to spare before the meeting ends, guess what happens?
Somebody will throw in a “topic” to fill up the remaining time. Sweet.
Often, you will find yourself going from meeting to meeting without getting much done at the end of the day.
This is yet another demonstration of Parkinson’s Law in action.
Project Deadlines
Now let’s look at a project example.
Imagine you are a leader at a software development company, and you are responsible for executing and delivering products to your customers.
You would typically set a deadline at the start of a project, and you observed that projects with six-month timelines often take the entire duration to complete, with last-minute rush and heroics from the team.
How is it possible that most projects would get delivered exactly at the original timeline that was estimated several months ago?
Another example of Parkinson’s Law in action.
Sales Targets
Let’s now look at a sales example.
Imagine you are head of sales, and you lead a team of ambitious sales professionals.
At the beginning of every year, you set annual sales targets for your teams. Members who meet and exceed those targets are in for handsome compensations and bonuses!
Your team, smart as they are, end up meeting or exceeding all targets. However, you notice that a majority of the deals were closed in the last quarter of the year.
And you find this to be true regardless of the sales target set at the beginning of the year — whether conservative, or ambitious.
This is yet another example of Parkinson’s Law in action.
The Psychology Behind Parkinson’s Law
At its core, Parkinson’s Law is driven by human psychology. It taps into the natural tendencies of procrastination, perfectionism, and the cognitive biases that affect how people manage their tasks.
The Comfort of ‘Extra Time’
When you are given more time than necessary to complete a task, you may unconsciously spread the work to fill the entire duration. This often happens because having ample time creates the illusion that tasks can be completed leisurely.
However, this leads to inefficiencies, as people spend more time refining details or overanalyzing minor aspects rather than focusing on the critical elements that drive progress.
Humans tend to overestimate what we can do in a week, and underestimate what we can do in a year.
The Procrastination Effect
Another psychological factor behind Parkinson’s Law is procrastination. When deadlines are far away, the urgency to act diminishes.
There’s still another two weeks - plenty of time! (so you think)
This results in last-minute rushes, where the majority of the work happens closer to the deadline. This behavior stems from the brain’s preference for immediate rewards over delayed gratification, known as temporal discounting.
The Perfectionism Trap
Now, being a perfectionist at heart, this one hits home for me.
Given too much time, perfectionists fall into the trap of constant tweaking and unnecessary iterations.
You’re probably familiar with the Pareto Principle (or the 80/20 rule): when you have more time at hand, as a perfectionist you may end up overextending tasks or putting more effort than is necessary to achieve the desired results.
Granted, there will always be some room for improvement in the quality of your work or output. However, the incremental ROI of additional effort drops rapidly after a certain point. Your time is then much better spent on some other task or activity.
Countering Parkinson’s Law
By now, it should be abundantly clear that Parkinson’s Law can waste precious time and resources, and impair your ability to drive business results effectively.
So, how do you counter it and maximize the efficiency of your team?
To address that, we will now discuss:
Strategies and tactics you can adopt to stay one step ahead of the law
Common mistakes to avoid falling into the trap
Make it real: Download the “Countering Parkinson’s Law Worksheet” and start putting the strategies into practice
Complementary Frameworks you can use in conjunction with Parkinson’s Law
Additional resources and takeaways
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