How Parkinson's Law Could Help You Achieve More!

One of the things I still enjoy about my day job is training new pharmacists and helping them work through their last year before becoming fully qualified.

Part of their last year is to produce quite a large portfolio of written cycles which document their learning experiences and how it will benefit them when fully qualified.

I noticed that many of my trainees found this quite a daunting task but because they had a year to complete it, most of them procrastinated and put it off until eventually they realized that they still had it all to do and time was running short. Suddenly the pressure was on and it became quite stressful trying to get it all done.

To help them out I have started introducing them to a concept I learned a few years ago called Parkinson's Law.

Parkinson's Law states that "A task will swell in importance the more time you allot to complete it." What this means is that the longer you give yourself to complete something, the more big and difficult it is going to feel.

As my students discovered - this means you procrastinate and do other things - usually less important things too. But knowing that you still have the big task to do causes stress to build up.

So how do you use Parkinson's Law to your benefit instead?

The secret is to set yourself deadlines to achieve a task. If you give yourself a month to do something then it will inevitably take you a month to do it. However, if you set yourself a deadline of a day instead then you will force yourself to focus on the task and work diligently to get it done.

Try implementing Parkinson's law in your own business. Set time limits for your tasks. Remove distractions and give the task your undivided attention.

It really helps me to work faster and get more done in the limited time I have available to work on my business.

Good luck with building your business.

David