How to Recognize and Overcome Parkinson’s Law

In this guide, you’ll learn:

When given the luxury of time, we don’t always spend it in the best way, and that can be put down to something called Parkinson’s Law and the idea that “work expands to fill the time available for completion.”

Parkinson’s Law is an explanation for poor time management and why we frequently procrastinate, so let’s take a look at what it is and how to overcome it.

Understanding Parkinson's Law

Parkinson’s Law came to be in 1955 when British naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson published a satirical essay in The Economist.

The tongue-in-cheek essay focused on Parkinson’s observations of the inefficiencies experienced in the British Civil Service. The article found a very important – and true – principle. It concluded that in large organizations, work continues to expand and bureaucracy increases, regardless of the productivity rate or the end goals.

The essay contains a famous example of an elderly woman who takes all day to send a postcard because that’s the amount of time she set aside for the task.

The reality is that sending a postcard is a simple job and shouldn’t take all day. However, since the woman had all day, she used the full amount of available time instead of just getting it done quickly.

While the essay was a satirical take on bureaucracy, it was certainly built on truth and we can, therefore, apply it to all areas of life.

Do you recognize any of these scenarios? If you do, you have already experienced Parkinson’s Law:

You are speaking at a conference in three weeks yet you wait until the night before to start practicing your speech.
An hour-long meeting is scheduled to discuss the agenda of an upcoming conference. The agenda is decided within the first 20 minutes and the rest of the time is spent deliberating on where to order the conference lunch from
You give yourself an hour to respond to emails. You take the full hour to draft and send responses even though it could have been done in about 15 minutes
You’re tasked with a complex project and a long deadline. Feeling overwhelmed, you “busy” yourself with other, easier tasks until the deadline starts looming
Your workload is unusually light so you fill up your time by spreading out and prolonging your everyday administrative tasks
You have left presentation preparation to the last minute. You work overtime to try and get it done but the result is rushed and not as polished as it should be

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality

After Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s essay was published, he went on to explore his observations in more depth. This led to the publishing of two books "Parkinson's Law And Other Studies in Administration" and "Parkinson's Law: Or The Pursuit of Progress" in which he details the Law of Triviality.

Unlike the original Parkinson’s Law where tasks expand to fill the allotted time, the Law of Triviality is the observation that humans tend to focus on unimportant details while crucial matters are left by the wayside.

This observation is also known as “bikeshedding,” which refers to the example Parkinson gave in his books.

He writes about a fictional committee that gathers to discuss plans for a nuclear power plant. Rather than focusing on the important aspects of the plans, most of the time is spent determining where the staff bicycle shed should go and how it should be constructed.

He writes, “The committee devoted a disproportionate amount of time to relatively unimportant details.”

This law is commonly observed in business settings where colleagues gather to talk about a specific subject but then go off on several tangents. The end of the meeting arrives, and nothing truly valuable has been discussed.

Reasons Why Parkinson’s Law Happens

Parkinson’s Law occurs for a variety of reasons, most of which have their roots in human psychology and behavior. The dynamics of the surrounding environment also lead to procrastination.

Here are the key reasons why we experience Parkinson’s Law:

Overestimation: When the amount of time for a task is overestimated, this leads to it taking longer to complete than it should. This is because deadlines are not shifted accordingly
Inefficiency: Having too much time leads us to be more inefficient with it and squander it unnecessarily. When proper deadlines are in place, we act with urgency, are decisive, and remain focused
Complexity: Our perceived complexity of a task is amplified when there is no urgency or clear deadline to complete it. The tendency is to put it off until the last minute rather than sit down right away and figure out how to tackle it
Psychological: If the deadline is too distant, our brain tells us to postpone the work since we have “plenty of time”
Bureaucracy: Lengthy or unnecessary processes and paperwork bog us down and make completing tasks inefficient. This bureaucracy is especially observed in larger organizations where there are layers of approval to go through
Scope creep: Tasks and projects evolve, especially when the deadline is far. The reality is that when there is too much time available, the tasks increase in complexity and then take longer to complete
Distractions: Those pinging noises our phones make, the chatty colleague in the cubicle next to you, and, of course, social media. We’re surrounded by distractions and they do an excellent job of lengthening tasks
Poor time management: Without a proper strategy in place to manage time, it runs away from us