How Parkinson’s Law Can Help You Boost Your Productivity
One of the best ways to boost your productivity is by applying Parkinson's law to your tasks, projects or goals. I am using it right now as I write this blogpost. It has helped me to boost my productivity and it will help you too!
"Work expands as to fill the time available for its completion" Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1955)
What Parkinson's law really means is that the more time you give yourself to complete a task the longer the task will take, and it will also increase in complexity!
Say you set yourself a full day to study a subject. You'll start coming up with more complex ideas to incorporate into the task. Example of this is the infamous
"I need to reorganize my desk completely in order to get more productive as I sit down and do my work".
The task that should have taken an hour or two of studying, expanded to include reorganizing your desk. Then you decided you should do some research on the best ergonomic setup for the height for your desk and monitor, while at it you need to make yourself a cup of coffee and maybe take a walk beforehand because you remembered an article you read about how walking will increase your blood flow and help you be more productive.
A two hour task now took all day. and the task itself didn't happen until the end of day, when you felt the pressure that the day is almost over. We are all perfectionists at heart, add in some pure procrastination and you'll surely spend more time on the task.
I spent a good 30 minutes looking for the right app to draw the diagram above and transfer it from my iPad. thats 30 minutes I could have spent finishing the article.
Other examples of Parkinson's law in action
- You had all day to get dressed yet you started 5 minute before the time you are supposed to leave
- You had all semester to study a subject yet you only started studying it 2 days before the exam
- You work in two week sprints at work and you notice on your Jira board all tickets only started moving toward the end of the sprint
Pressure Is your friend
Another Law that is in effect here is Yerkes-Dodson law which states the relationship between pressure/arousal and performance
The shape of this curve is variable depending on the difficulty of the task. For example, difficult or mentally demanding tasks require a lower level of arousal, whereas tasks requiring stamina and persistence may require high level of arousal (to stay motivated)
On the upswing of the curve you see the energizing effect of the deadline pressure
On the downswing of the curve where you see a decline in performance this can be due to the effect of stress
Boost your productivity
The best approach to make those laws work for you in a healthy way is to set yourself tighter deadlines to do things. Cut your deadline times in half and you'll double your productivity. Finding the ideal deadline for a task will take some trial and error.
Just like anything in life, experiment with different deadlines for different tasks and iterate. You'll soon find yourself able to set very realistic deadlines and gain so much time back in your day or work day
Action time
Improving your productivity is very rewarding, as you finish more you'll get more kick of dopamine and in-force that habit. The only way to get better results is by taking action on that knowledge. Start now by setting yourself shorter deadlines for the different tasks you need to get done and enjoy the results!