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Increase Your Productivity by Reverse Engineering Parkinson’s Law
The time management secret hidden in plain sight
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
-Parkinson’s law (Cyril Northcote Parkinson)
For over a decade, I’ve had this quote printed on a strip of paper and taped to my computer screen, reminding me that I don’t need to work after hours (and by “me” I mean my boss).
The Story
Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a British naval historian and author. He published dozens of books, including his best-seller Parkinson’s Law, in which Parkinson shared with the world his most famous words “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”, a Law that made him an authority in public administration and management.
When it was first published in the 1950s, this law explained through a mathematical equation how bureaucracies expand over time:
Basically, Bureaucracy (x) equals 2 times Greed (K) raised to the power of Laziness (m), plus Soul-Crushing Labor Years (P), all divided by God Knows What Actually Got Done (n).
Crystal clear, right?
Despite originally showing us that we should all praise greed and laziness for leading to higher employability rates and nerve-racking inefficiencies, nowadays Parkinson’s law is commonly applied to other fields, including economics, computer science, and management.
Like most people, I apply it to personal time management, where this law translates into the idea that defining a long period of time to complete an otherwise simple task will complicate it.
Practical Use
What if we were to flip this equation on its head? What if, instead of stretching out our deadlines, we condensed them, forcing ourselves to confront tasks with greater efficiency and focus?
By applying ultra-complex formulas of reverse engineering, we can conclude that if a task expands to fill the big slot of time we allocated to it, maybe if we reduce…
