Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s law is by far the most common yet deadly cognitive bias I have come across in my years of working with strategic plans and scorecards.

Parkinson’s law basically states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

In other words, you will stretch out the completion of your task until it fills the time available to complete it. Simply put, if you allocate yourself two weeks to complete something, then it will take you two weeks to complete it.

But if you allocate yourself two days to complete that same task, it will take you two days to complete it.

Strategic plans are often broken up into quarters and half years.

While this is understandable for reporting purposes, the truth is, many strategic initiatives do not take quarters or years to complete.

The result of this strange approach is that we allocate far too much time to completing simple things, which give rise to Parkinson’s law in full effect.

Parkinson’s law leads us to procrastinate because we give ourselves more time than we need.

This creates the illusion that there is enough time, causing us to leave tasks right until they are due.

A basic way to avoid falling into the trap of this illusion is to rather focus on how much time a specific task would take you to complete, as opposed to how much time you have available before you need to start the task.

For instance, suppose you need to apply for a passport before a trip, instead of thinking there are still six weeks before the trip, one should think it takes one week to get a passport.

The point is to take your eyes off the illusion of the time you have available and fix your gaze on the task at hand.

In an age of information overload, Sunrise is The Namibian’s morning briefing, delivered at 6h00 from Monday to Friday. It offers a curated rundown of the most important stories from the past 24 hours – occasionally with a light, witty touch. It’s an essential way to stay informed. Subscribe and join our newsletter community.