How to overcome Parkinson's Law

To overcome Parkinson’s Law:

• Make a list of your tasks
• Jot down how long each task will take to complete
• Now, give yourself half of that time to complete the tasks
• The goal is to complete each task without sacrificing quality

This may seem crazy but you’ll start to learn pretty quickly which tasks you were estimating correctly and which you weren’t.

• Tasks that you’ve estimated accurately simply won’t be able to be done in the time allotted.
• The next step with these tasks is to slightly increase the allotted time so that you end up spending less time than you originally would have without sacrificing any work quality.
• Tasks that you didn’t estimate correctly, will be completed within the time which means you’ve saved yourself half of the time.
• Continue experimenting with these tasks to see if you can further reduce the allocated time without affecting the quality of your work.

Over time you will learn to develop an accurate time estimation for each task so you could end up saving yourself a lot of time.

This strategy can also help you with overcome procrastination by flipping procrastination triggers on their heads by making a task more structured, less boring, and less difficult. This is a great example of flipping the Procrastination triggers on their head.

Source: {a} How To Use Parkinson’s Law To Your Advantage

Related Topics: Productivity