You were given three weeks to finish that project. It seems like ample time, and your stress level is low. You have plenty of other items on your plate, and this project hasn't become a priority yet. There will be more than enough time. Before you know it, it's the day before it's due and you're working overtime to get it done. Where did the time go? Why did you wait so long before working on it?
Any student who has crammed for an exam or pulled an all-nighter to finish a paper knows exactly what I'm talking about. Parkinson's law is the idea that the work we have to do will expand to fill the time we have to do it. If we are given two weeks to complete a project that may only take us two hours, we'll find a way to use the entire two weeks.
Since the law was proposed, albeit satirically, in 1955, by British Naval Historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson, researchers have examined the phenomenon quite seriously. They have found that when we are given a task, we automatically consider how much time is available to complete the task instead of how much time is actually required. So, when your boss gives you two weeks, it doesn't matter that you are fairly certain that the project will only take you a day to complete. Wasted time and inefficiency balloon as we fill the space we are given.
The desire to push back against increasingly bloated bureaucracies is strong. In part, the influence of Parkinson's law rests in the fact that we are rarely rewarded for getting something done earlier than expected. Great work is simply rewarded with more work. Many industries, including Higher Education, have been accused of bureaucratic bloat. This is signified by increasing numbers of administrative roles to address the processes and procedures that we've created for ourselves, without ever asking if they are truly necessary.
In part, our succumbing to this tendency to fill our time, no matter how much we are given, is the result of universal work standards that aren't based on the work being done. A 40 hour workweek or a 15 week semester are universal across disciplines and locations. However, neither of these arbitrary numbers are based on intentionally exploring how long the work takes to complete.
In the past few years, we've begun to recognize the true significance of this fact. At the outset of the pandemic, millions of people were sent how to learn and work remotely. All of a sudden, the surveillance that we took for granted as compulsory was no longer there. Despite initial concerns, and a fair bit of micromanaging from supervisors left with not much else to do, people were still just as productive, if not more, while working from home in their pajamas. This is not to say that the social components of face-to-face work and learning were not missing and harming group development and social development. It proved, however, that once the tethers of a 9-to-5 workday were loosened, folks were just as or even more productive than before.
So, we can certainly take steps to more rigorously manage our time and create more efficiency. We can set our own deadlines, make use of productivity software, intentionally draft to do lists and timelines for that work, and set micro-goals along the way. However, if the outcome is the same whether it takes us two days or two weeks to complete a task, there is no incentive to work smarter. We need to think more intentionally about how much time something actually requires and worry less about adhering to industry norms or standards.
Between my freshman and sophomore years at my undergraduate alma mater, the institution switched from quarters to semesters. It was quite an involved process and caused plenty of confusion. One of the most confused populations were the faculty members, who now had to reorganize their curricula. For many, the answer was simply to stretch a 9-week course into a 15-week course without adding any additional content. They filled the space they were given, and we felt the awkwardness of disjointed pacing.
Assuming the incentives are in place and your motivation is aligned with the work, being conscious of Parkinson's Law can help you rethink how you plan your work and the work you might be assigning to others!
"Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that probably another hour after lunch too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work."
- Peter Gibbons
