Be Careful Of Parkinson's Law

 

Video Transcript: 

Oh my God! I finally understand it! Work expands to the time allowed for it! Work expands to the time allowed for it. This idea changed my life and I think it can change yours.

Let's say you want to write a letter and the deadline is 10 p.m. You get a shower, you spend one hour looking for the perfect paper, another hour looking for the perfect pen, another hour thinking of the perfect words and another writing them.

By 10 p.m., your letter is done! But if you only had 10 minutes to write the letter, you'll skip the shower, you'll find a piece of paper, find a pen, write it down and you're good to go. 

It's the same letter: one took 10 hours to make, another took 10 minutes to make. And, this is work that expands to the time allowed for it. It's called Parkinson's Law and it's a real thing. It's not procrastination, it's not laziness, it's unnecessary work that we do simply because we have time. 

This isn't just you and me, this is entire companies. If the deadline is next month, we work every day, we add many people to the project for one month to finish it. But if the deadline is next week, magically we can finish the project in one week. I saw this happen at my company. When something is not urgent, we take our time.

We put 10 people to work on one project and in one month, we do something we could have done in one week. This is how big companies die. Work expands to the time allowed for it. 

This is a big idea! If you give yourself less time to do something, you will do good work! No hours spent finding the perfect pen, no hours wasted in meetings, no unnecessary work. 

So instead of finishing something next year, next month, or next week, remember Parkinson's Law. Most likely, we can finish it tomorrow.