Accepting Parkinson’s Law

This was sound advice, but I made the fatal mistake recently of not listening to it myself.

Recap

A few weeks ago I shared how I was struggling to find time to do my Honours work now that I was back at work full-time. There was no real solution in the way of a compromise, at least not for the long-term, and I would not have sacrificed my job to do so. I said at the end of that article that I was going to figure something out and tell you when I did. And now I have, which is what this article is all about.

Parkinson’s Law

If you’re an avid productivity reader or lifehacker, then you may have come across this law. Parkinson’s Law, coined by Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson, is the propensity for someone to fill time and space that is available, often unnecessarily. In the productivity world, the adage is that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

For example, you could give yourself two months to complete a particular project, or even a simple task. And it will take two months to do it. You could also give yourself two weeks to complete it, and it will take two weeks. There is not always a direct correlation between the amount of time spent on something and its success or quality. These are usually personal measures that are not influenced by time but rather skill.

I used to talk about this to other people when they asked me about how best to manage their workloads during undergrad. I told them to manage their priorities before they managed their time, and then to give their tasks the correct amount of time depending on their priorities, not the other way around. This was sound advice, but I made the fatal mistake recently of not listening to it myself.

Knowing vs Doing

I think that for a long time I have been using the adage of work filling the space we give it as an excuse and not as a principle. I’ve been telling myself, “this isn’t as important as that other big thing, so don’t spend too much time on it.” But then I would work on the other bigger thing and get lost in its complexities.

I wouldn’t listen to the law for the second circumstance. I would use it to get out of work for the first and then promptly forget for the second why I learnt it in the first place. Parkinson’s Law isn’t an excuse, and it’s also not a principle. It is a phenomenon that we experience and as much as we try to overpower it, we have to understand it is with us to stay. It needs to be understood and then used to our own advantage, but it isn’t the same for everyone.

That’s why reading about it and telling it to people doesn’t actually help you. You need to practice it. You need to embrace it. And you need to be aware of it during times where it can help you more than hinder you.

Introspection

I don’t enjoy dropping my stresses and challenges on other people. I usually share them when I’m asked to and here I am writing to you about them, but going around asking for help isn’t a strong part of my process. Instead, I try to look internally.

Meditation has taught me a great deal about bodily control. It hasn’t only taught me that controlling the breath has a calming effect on the body, but it can also result in clarity of the mind. I am not an expert in meditation by any stretch of the imagination, but through daily practice for nearly a year now I can safely say that it does work if you let it.

Recently, I sat down to think about everything that I was experiencing and I realised a few things. First I realised that I was adopting a version of the colloquial “hurry up and wait” experience in my work. There were days where I would spend hours and hours throwing myself into a project because I was so worried that I wouldn’t have time like that again. This happened often. But then there were days where I would spend time not working at all because I had already done the bulk of the work and decided those would be “break days.” But, the cycle would start again and repeat like this through the course of the semester. I would go full speed, then slow down to a practical halt, and then go full speed again. It was draining.

This meant that I didn’t fully understand how I managed my time and would compensate that lack of understanding with throwing myself into work and hoping I would get enough done in time. Inevitably, however, I would have gone too fast and then felt confused when I didn’t need to work on something two weeks before it was due. It was strange and I didn’t enjoy it. I knew that had to change somehow, I just wasn’t sure how.

The second thing that I realised was that Parkinson’s Law was in full effect. Not only was I diving headfirst blindly into my work, but I was also giving them too much time. It was a paradox because I was telling myself I didn’t have a lot of time, but then I would take forever to complete anything because of those “break days” that I thought would be a good idea.

This didn’t always happen. There were a few assignments where I would give myself three days to do them because I needed the rest of the week to work on another. But I didn’t give those experiences the credit they were due. Without me doing that, a lot of my work would not have been done the way they have been. That’s also a funny thing about this law. Giving yourself two weeks to do something instead of two months doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t get done, it just means it was quicker and might mean the quality won’t be the same. Some things, however, are better done than perfect, which is another battle for another day.

I was only embracing Parkinson’s Law when I remembered, and on the smaller assignments where I could easily see the end result. But the larger ones were so overwhelming at times that to give me less time than I thought was necessary could result in a failure to deliver anything, and I wasn’t willing to risk that. Apparently.

I have spoken at length with my lecturers on the topic of perfection and just doing things to get them done, especially when they are a small piece of a much, much larger puzzle. But that’s not an easy thing to do for me. I’m not going to throw it out the window, though. In fact, I’m going to embrace it now more than ever.

When I sat down to reflect on these things, I also realised that this isn’t going to get any easier for me. I’m back at work now and the world is slowly spinning again, which means that the luxury of time is now more scarce than before. And I need to accept that.

These things don’t have to get easier, I just need to learn to handle them more effectively. This is something that Parkinson’s Law can help me with. It’s not a remedy, but it will be my guide through this. Nothing worthwhile ever came easy, and if this first semester is anything to go by, then I’m in for one hell of a ride. I’ll see you on the other side.