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Accomplish More by Applying Parkinson's Law
Posted by Wendy Boswell at 2:00 AM on November 5, 2007
All of us could probably do with a more productive workflow. Lifehack.org suggests applying Parkinson's Law to our daily routine:
Parkinson's Law states that "work will fill the time available for its completion." This is a side effect of focusing on doing work instead of getting projects completed. Give yourself strict deadlines and cultivate a desire to finish projects, not just check tasks off on a to-do list.You could do this by setting a timer for a set amount of time to finish a project— once the timer sounds, you are done and must move on to something else; a similar method is working in 48 minute increments.
Tags: productivity | productivity killers | timer
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Alan Thomas
Posted 6:59 PM 4/11/07
While this might be true for small, daily things, from my professional experience, nothing leads to poor-quality output from projects like arbitrary timelines. Sure you might cross more things off your lists, but your setting yourself (or more likely your employer) up for long-term problems.
Alan Thomas
RunnerGirl
Posted 9:35 PM 4/11/07
What has been successful for me has been to break a big project into manageable parts. For example, when trying to complete a white paper which included a lot of research and time, I broke the paper into sections. This made it much easier for me to see how the different parts would make up the completed paper and it was also encouraging to see some progress before the final paper was completed.
In addition, I broke up te different tasks so I was not doing the same task all day.I researched for a while and then I wrote for a while. Seeing the smaller parts, allowed me to keep my eye on the prize and helped me finish the paper.
RunnerGirl
Matthew Cornell
Posted 10:14 AM 6/11/07
Determining the "ideal" time chunk is a really interesting question. There probably isn't a single "one size fits all" answer. A few perspectives: Drucker suggest 90 minutes, and there's 96 minutes (80-20-ing an 8 hour day).
Matthew Cornell