Combatting Parkinson’s Law
Work will expand to fill the time available for its completion. In other words, if you give yourself a week to complete a relatively simple two-hour task, that two-hour task will balloon into a larger, more complex project that will take a week to finish, at least according to Parkinson’s Law.
Parkinson’s Law was developed by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a humorous essay he wrote for “The Economist” in 1955. In the article, Parkinson shared the story of an elderly woman whose only task in a day was to send a postcard. That was it—other than sending that postcard, the woman had no other responsibilities for the day. That task—the simple act of sending a postcard—would normally take a busy person three minutes or less to complete. But the woman spent an hour finding the postcard, a half hour looking for her glasses, another half hour looking for the mailing address, an hour-and-a-half deciding what to write on the postcard, and finally 20 minutes deciding whether to take an umbrella along on her walk to the mailbox. What was supposed to be a three-minute task took nearly four hour to complete!
I think about Parkinson’s Law every time I have a deadline. How long it takes me to grade, prep for class, or write one of these blog posts, by and large, depend on when my deadline is and how much time I have until then.
But studies suggest that when given a task, we think of how much time is available to complete the task instead of how much time we actually need. This mindset results in wasted time and procrastination. This is why, according to the studies, we sometimes feel the need to take all the time we’re given to complete a task even if it doesn’t require that much time.
How can you overcome Parkinson’s Law?
Putting projects into the context of larger goals and creating timelines in days rather than weeks—or hours instead of days—are two strategies to help overcome Parkinson’s Law.
For example, turn the goal of “passing the bar exam” into “learning Evidence,” or “learning Contracts.” Then turn that goal of “learning Evidence” into smaller goals of “understanding Hearsay,” and "impeachment" and "character evidence" and so on. If you achieve those smaller goals, your larger goal will be attainable.
And don't just set a deadline of July (for taking the bar exam), but schedule more interim deadlines throughout the summer that will contribute to passing the bar exam, like prepare for and complete the BARBRI Simulated MBE in June.
Once you understand what Parkinson’s Law is and how it works, you can use it to your advantage.
