Have you ever heard of Parkinson’s Law?

Or is it just me being (ignorantly) unaware of the term😅?

And no, I’m not referring to Parkinson’s Disease here. This is a blog post about time and procrastination. About productivity. And time management, sort of. A little food for thought, if you will.

The concept of time had man fascinated through the centuries, hadn’t it?

Parkinson’s Law and Einstein’s Relativity Theories has me fascinated, for sure!

So what is Parkinson’s Law then?

It’s quite an interesting phenomenon, really. Come to think of it… I definitely came across this little productivity thief before. And without really knowing it, or that it even has a name! I had quite an aha-moment when I read on LinkedIn about an article that was published in The Economist.

A phenomenon described by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1955 in a humorous essay: https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law

It basically boils down to how “work” expands to fill the time available for it to be completed. The example he uses to explain how an old lady can take a whole day to write and send a postcard, being distracted by searching for a card, her spectacles and many other little “time thieves”, filling up the time. While the same task would take a busy man 3 minutes to complete.

How to combat Parkinson’s law in the workplace

I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase before: if you want something done quickly, give it to a busy person. And we all know it’s true!

The more time you have to complete a task, the more you procrastinate and the longer it takes you to get it done. We tend to leave the work to the very last minute.

To prevent that last-minute chaos…

➡️ Get perfectly clear on the scope of the project

➡️ Break up longer and more complex tasks into smaller tasks

➡️ Set shorter timelines to complete those tasks

➡️ Allocate specific tasks of group work to different persons

The hands of time…

can spin mercilessly. And we have to keep up.

Who wouldn’t agree that time flies? There’s never enough time or hours in one day, right? 

As the years go by, they seem shorter and shorter and we seem to get older much quicker. We usually have too many responsibilities and too little time. Ask any insurance broker. For many of their clients, there never seem to be enough years left to save for retirement. 

For students, exams arrive way too quickly, and so does the end of your well deserved holiday!

Yet, Albert Einstein taught us just the opposite: 

“When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.”  With his relativity theories, he turned the world around. Still, we struggle to properly comprehend the whole concept.

It seems to be too difficult for us to get the better of our time. 

What if we could turn back the hands of time? 

(I’m sure you can hear Cher sing “If I can turn back time” in your head, right? If you’re old enough, that is). Wouldn’t that be just wonderful? We can never get lost time back. That is one serious fact.

But…

First things first

The best would be to start with the absolute basics…

Health is wealth. Without it, you have nothing and you are nothing, no matter who you might think you are. Money can’t buy you your health back, just as illness can easily bankrupt you. Carona has taught us that much.

As the number one priority, take care of your health first. Then take care of your health- and life insurance to prevent later devastation. 

It shouldn’t all just be serious

Psychologists tell us that no one can function from a place of fear. 

Take a step back and get quiet. 

Rather try to look at things from a calmer perspective and figure out what your next step should be. Then get professional help where necessary. The coaching business has expanded tremendously over the past few years. And the right type of coach at the right time can be worth his/her weight in gold.

Life is not a rehearsal and there is only one take. We might as well stop wasting our precious time and live! You don’t have to “rock around the clock” and try to sort it all out at once. 

The bottom line…

We should make the most of every moment we have and enjoy it while we can. And completing our daily tasks with focus and on time.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments 👇.

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