What is Parkinson's Law and how can you overcome it?

We’ve all been there. The essay is due tomorrow, but we had weeks to work on it. An item on the to-do list sits there with no defined timeline when it could be done in less than 30 minutes. 

Parkinson’s Law is a concept from naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson published in 1955 that states:

"work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion"

Did you know there’s more to Parkinson’s Law? It states that the number of workers within a bureaucracy tends to grow regardless of the amount of work available to be completed. Upon further research, Parkinson’s Law is everywhere and has lots of applications.

The primary focus for this post will be understanding this law to set better goals and get more done, faster. However, let's take a brief detour to explore the other aspects of this law because I think they're interesting.

Did you know there’s even a formula for the growth of a bureaucracy?

• x – number of new employees to be hired annually
• k – number of employees who want to be promoted by hiring new employees
• m – number of working hours per person for the preparation of internal memoranda (micropolitics)
• P – difference: age at hiring − age at retirement
• n – number of administrative files actually completed
  

The point of this is not to explain this entire formula, so we won’t get into that. I’ll briefly touch on Parkinson’s coefficient of inefficiency which in basic terms states: the efficiency of a committee or body of decision makers decreases above 20 members as it becomes more difficult to gain consensus. 

We can observe this in a large governments as well as large corporations; both the organization as a whole and the leadership team. Yes, we can argue that there is potentially more work as a company expands, and individuals become more specialized. But, how much of that work is truly necessary?

There’s a reason startups exist and are typically able to move faster. They may have less resources, but their work will expand to the available resources and constraints they face. Then, innovation plus smaller teams will allow for quicker decision making with outside-the-box thinking thanks to these constraints.

Additionally, these smaller teams have quicker turnaround times because oftentimes it’s life or death for the company. Pair that with less bureaucracy and startups can run extremely quickly. Collecting money, shipping a feature or bug fix, or fundraising to keep the company alive all require tighter time constraints and execution. 

In the technology world, Moore’s Law is the "doubling law" which states that “the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years, leading to increased processing power and memory capacity.” This means that data and storage on computers is expanding to fill the available space (Parkinson's Law). Then, queue Moore's Law to push past these constraints.

Thanks to technological and manufacturing advances, the cost of storage has gone down dramatically along with the size of the physical drive, while the actual storage amount has increased and become faster.

If we look back in the not-too-distant past to 2015, a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) cost about $100. We can now buy 4TB solid state drives for as low as $230, and it’s the size of a stick of gum (1 Terabyte = 1024 Gigabytes). That’s 16X the storage amount at 14% the cost per gigabyte!

Detour over. What now? 

If your time management skills are already perfect and you don’t ever procrastinate, congratulations. You probably don’t need to read further. If that’s not you, maybe the following can help. 

A few practical examples to stress the importance of overcoming Parkinson’s Law

1. I completed my first full Ironman in 2022 after 10 months of training. This is a great example of overcoming Parkinson’s Law. It would be physically impossible to do an Ironman with no training or to try to cram it all into the last month leading up to the race. I would’ve severely injured myself. 
   
   Alternatively, could I have taken 12, 18, or 24 months to prepare for this? Yes. Did I need it? No. My training filled the full 10 months, and I was able to successfully complete it. I might’ve been less disciplined if I had more time available because “I still have plenty of time…”
   
2. When I wrote papers in school, I would regularly procrastinate. It was bad. Typically, I could get it done within 1-3 hours. The paper was always going to take 1-3 hours, but it would take me 3 weeks to actually have it finished. It was because I had 3 weeks to do it, so the work and effort expanded to the full 3 weeks. If it were due by the end of the week, I would’ve had no problem finishing it by that deadline. Most people are in the same boat. 
   
3. In this post, I detailed my process for preparing to move overseas. The best thing I did for myself was make progress every day. It didn’t matter what it was, just checking one thing off the list or packing one box every single day. That way, I’m not left with a dozen things to do in 2 days before hopping on a plane. 
   

The less time you have available, the less you can overthink and second guess yourself. Once you set that deadline, you have to make moves to complete your project. 

This all comes down to time management and discipline. It’s critical to minimize distractions and to be cliche: “lock in.” There are plenty of resources on the concept of flow. Rian Doris and Steven Kotler are great places to start if this topic interests you. 

Now that we know more about the concepts of this law and some tangible examples, here are some strategies to help. 

1. Set realistic deadlines and milestones
   1. Focus on the time you need, not the time you have available. 
   2. Break down tasks into smaller chunks to make progress and build momentum.
   3. Identify your S.M.A.R.T Goals with a focus on the time-bound.
2. Prioritize effectively
   1. For many people, having a to-do list helps prioritize what to work on and allows you to continuously make progress. You can see the end goal in mind, and every item you check off you are making progress and know that whatever project will be completed by the deadline.
3. Minimize distractions
   1. Put your phone away, don’t let yourself onto other apps. 
   2. Find the environment that works for you. Music helps for me. Some need silence.
4. Time Management
   1. Pomodoro technique - set a timer and focus solely on whatever task at hand until the timer goes off. Take a short 5-10 minute break. Complete 3-4 cycles then take a longer break.
   2. 2-minute rule - if it can be done within 2 minutes, do it immediately and get it off your mind. However, this should not break your focus sessions. This means, it's typically better to just do the task now than to schedule it to be done later.
   3. Schedule out time to work on specific projects - be deliberate with planning your day and your work. When you schedule your day, you are in control. If you don't schedule your time, others will schedule it for you and steal your time.
   4. “Busy people get more done in a day because they don’t waste time”

Here’s what is currently working for me with my writing - a skill I’m trying to develop. 

I identify the concept I want to write about and start with less than 5 minutes of thought around whether I know enough to write about it. If I feel like I do, or I want to learn while I write about it, then I’ll put roughly 30 minutes into a draft outline. This gets my thoughts organized and doesn’t need to be perfect to start.

Then, once I like the structure and the message, I’ll go back through and refine everything. It’s an iterative process. Sometimes, I will take a break between the draft and the refinement step because new ideas will continue brewing in my subconscious. 

We can do more than we think, and hopefully understanding how this law works will help you navigate to higher levels of productivity!