Parkinson's Law

As a home-based business professional or as any business professional one of the most invisible detractors from your success is a concept called Parkinson's Law. Now if any of you are either into productivity or have had experience with a billable hours type position (law firm} you know this term for certain!

Simply stated the concept is "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Wikipedia reference Parkinson's Law The adage was actually coined and part of a humorous essay by a British researcher who was proposing the concept applied to the hiring of government workers based upon his experience in British civil service! Hire more workers... government work expands! How appropriate!

For us business professionals we see it in the tasks and projects we are faced with on a daily basis. If we don't set deadlines, time lines and prioritize, next thing we know we spent two hours perfecting the task that could have been done in a 15 minute self-imposed allocated window. As a closet perfectionist I wrestle with this constantly. Posted on my office whiteboard in a prominent visible location next to my daily projects is one of my favorite mantras - Good is Good enough! It by no means is meant to encourage me to put out poor/inferior work, instead it is a constant reminder to let go and be OK with what I have completed. Getting the work done at 90% is better than not getting it done! Although a good guide for increasing productivity, focusing on the urgent and important, setting self-imposed deadlines and time lines, one must be careful to realize that setting unrealistic deadlines does not necessarily equate to better productivity.

Many productivity gurus proclaim a key to productivity is only reviewing your email 1-2 times a day even going so far as to encourage auto responders alerting people to this habit so they can self-solve their problems. We would propose that the more effective way is to consciously impose your own restrictions and focus on reducing the allotted time for your repetitive or daily tasks - while at the same time measuring and monitoring your service and performance levels. Take a constant improvement approach (Kaizen) rather than a 1 hour a day approach! It's the cold turkey versus a managed approach! This is one of those topics that falls in the category however of it's not how - it's what - that is important. It is important you manage closely your focus and time, set self imposed deadlines and get the work done. Reward yourself for things completed on time!

Well I set myself a goal to publish this and looks like my time is up!