Have you ever had to complete a task that had a long deadline, but you couldn't muster the willpower to complete it until 0.2 seconds before it was due?
Of course you did. At least one time. You wouldn't be human otherwise.
However, you may have noticed that even though the time limit was shorter, you still could have completed it in time. Why is that?
At first glance, you might say, "Procrastination, duh!" But here's another explanation that won't make you feel as bad.
To put it succinctly, the phenomenon is called Parkinson's Law, which states that "work expands so as to fulfill the time required for its completion.”
Cyril Parkinson, a British naval historian and specialist in public administration, was the first to observe and write extensively about it. He noticed that the more time bureaucrats had for a task, the longer it took them. Shorten the allotted time and things move quickly again.
Related: 3 tips to make you more productive
Parkinson's law, laziness and procrastination
We procrastinate for a wide variety of reasons, like fear or just plain laziness.
However, there are also an evolutionary motivation behind laziness. Our ancestors lived in a world where food sources were not nearly as plentiful as they are today. As such, they conserved energy for times when they entered survival mode:hunting, foraging, exploring, building, etc.
If one of our ancestors wasted energy on unnecessary tasks, he would not be able to cope with the difficulties of collecting food. So, in a counterintuitive evolutionary twist, laziness turned out to be an important trait in keeping our species alive.
Which brings us back to Parkinson's Law. Our biology urges us not to expend energy on a task that is not yet important to our survival. We postpone, delay, avoid, create excuses, etc.
But then the deadline arrives, takes you out of idleness and gives you a sense of urgency. Deep down, you know that missing the deadline is bad for your survival, as it can cost you your reputation at work, or in some cases even your job, money, valuable assets, friendships, relationships, etc.
This fear drives you to sleep all night to complete a project or work crazy overtime.
As you can guess by now, the purpose of using Parkinson's Law is to get you Send into a mild survival mode where you actually complete tasks, without lazing about (too much).
Related: 13 Undeniable Ways to Get Fucked
How to use Parkinson's Law
1. Get used to setting deadlines.
Giving yourself time constraints will force you to restructure work tasks so they can fit into the schedule.
More complex projects and tasks with a distant deadline lulling you into this false sense of security. The work should be done now, but not now, now.
In such cases, breaking down the main task into smaller chunks and assigning a deadline to each will bring them closer to the time horizon and give you a sense of urgency that will motivate you to complete it.
But deadlines can also help you work less. Or at least spend less time in the office. It's easy to treat the 5 or 6 p.m. threshold as more of a guideline than a rule, and work beyond that in order to complete the tasks you've been putting off throughout the day.
The fact is that you almost always know that postponing the task will keep you working overtime, and yet you're okay with it. It's because you don't feel like you're losing anything by staying in the office longer, which brings us to the next point.
2. What do you lose if you don't meet the deadline?
The easiest way to make yourself meet a deadline is to give yourself something to lose if you don't meet it. Think about what you're missing by lingering in the office.
If you got home early, you can watch a movie with your lover, relax in the kitchen and cook your favorite dish, or work on that side project. Instead, you're wasting all those opportunities by doing last-minute work that you could have done earlier in the day.
A good way to stick to a time constraint is to plan something else right after. the deadline you have set. For example, if you want to be sure you'll be done sending a bunch of emails by 6 p.m., schedule a date at 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m. Now you have real skin in the game to stick to your target and not relax.
3. Learn to create reasonable deadlines.
There are really only two reasons why you might want to use Parkinson's Law:
Reduce wasted hours when you could be doing other things.
Stop feeling guilty and stressed about wasting time.
However, when you first apply the rule, you might feel overzealous and set yourself incredibly tight deadlines in order to work faster.
It doesn't work. Instead, you'll end up giving yourself even more stress by rushing to meet the deadline. Not only that, but the quality of work also goes down.
The purpose of the deadline is not to compete with the clock, but to reduce stress and wasted time.
This is a takeaway from a study by Dan Ariely, a renowned professor of behavioral economics. His experiment involved groups of students submitting three papers over the course of a semester.
The “free choice” group could choose their own paper submission deadlines.
The control group, however, had to hand in their papers at a time set by the professor.
Compared to the third control group, the "free-choice" students enjoyed their task less and their papers also had more errors.
The final conclusion of the study is that, although self-imposed deadlines are effective, people find it difficult to optimize them properly.
The purpose of the deadline is not to compete with the clock, but to reduce stress and wasted time. If a task realistically requires six hours of work, don't try to do it in five. If you can complete it in seven hours, great. This extra hour is not wasted time, but a buffer period for unexpected events such as an urgent phone call, loss of concentration or even just a short period of relaxation.
Parkinson's Law can help you help reduce some of the wasted time and stress in your life and, in some cases, help you get more done than you thought possible.
To conclude, keep the following in mind when you apply the law:
Always have a deadline.
What do you lose if you can't meet the deadline?
Is the deadline realistic? If not, try to find the exact one.
And another thing:be gentle with yourself and always see the time limit as a tool to help you, not as a race.
Related: 12 ways to turn stress into productivity
