work - parkinson law

While his piece was intended as a humorous critique of bureaucratic inefficiency, the principle is applicable to a range of situations, from personal time management to large-scale projects. The generalized insight rings true: Have all day to process email and you end up emailing for the entire day. Have thirty minutes to process email and you crank through your entire inbox in a flash. Have months to complete an assignment and you procrastinate enough for the assignment to take months. Have two days to complete an assignment and you work efficiently and get it done. Open time frames lead to a lot of movement and very little progress—the rocking-horse phenomenon of busywork culture. We tend to be more efficient and productive when constraints come into play. We also tend to focus on the important when pressed for time. You can leverage Parkinson’s law to be more efficient and effective in your professional and personal life: 

-  Establish time blocks that are shorter than you’re comfortable with for low-importance but necessary tasks. Use this artificial pressure to avoid procrastination and free up time for important, high-value tasks. 

- Batch-process email in one to three short, time-constrained windows. If you allow yourself to check your email throughout the day, you’ll be plagued by attention residue and never get through your work. Condense the processing into short windows to become more efficient and avoid the negative cognitive impact of task-switching. 

- Shorten standard meetings to twenty-five minutes. The tighter window makes participants more efficient (avoids “How about the weather” small talk) and gives you a five-minute break to reset in between meetings. 

- Work on big projects in one- to three-hour focus blocks. Get a simple focus app on your computer or phone and set the timer. Start at sixty minutes and work your way up. The time constraint will make you more efficient, and the breaks in between will reset your mental energy. Batch dreaded personal tasks (tidying up, laundry, dishes, et cetera) into short, dedicated windows. Focusing on those tasks in sprints is more effective than lingering on them for extended jogs.