Procrastination and Parkinson's law

History

History

Parkinson's Law is the adage first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955. It was stated as, The amount of time in which one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete said task. As time progressed though the definition of the law altered to be associated with computers. An example of such is: "Storage requirements will increase to meet storage capacity" or "Data expands to fill the space available for storage."

Present tense

By reading the above definitions you shouldn't really have difficulty seeing the association between those stated and this, the most current version of the law. The Stock-Sanford Corollary to Parkinson's Law is quoted, "If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do." If a task can expand to fill the time allotted, then conversely, the effort given can be limited by limiting the allotted time, down to a minimum amount of time actually required to complete the task. This is the phrase that is mostly associated with procrastination.

Cure

The most effective cure to the most current version of the law is simple. According to the definition above if you have a deadline for a project that is one month away from being due, you will naturally put off finishing the project until closer to the due date. The remedy is to create firm deadlines that are closer to the current time the project is assigned. By eliminating the available space between assignment and due date one stays more focused and prioritizes more effectively, wasting less time and space. I know that I am personally blatantly guilty of being effected by this. One remedy that I have is to eliminate my distractions during the day such as email, IM's, or text messages that once paid attention too can lead to many many minutes of wasted time. The distractions took up that available space that I had. Taking me away from the time allotted for my project.By eliminating them I took away the space available for them to distract me.

Summary

Parkinson's Law is a condition that virtually everyone is effected by at least a few times in theirs lives if not more then likely, consistently. With all the added distractions that technological advances have given us by created our live more efficient it has actually caused to become less efficient by giving us more ways to become available and distracted from the main task at hand. The best way to overcome this is to actually make ourselves less available causing us to be more focused on what we need to get done. Sometimes you just need to say "No".

Procrastination and Parkinson's law

By: Mark Powell

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