When "Enough Time" is not "Enough Productivity"

If you are told that "task completion" is a key factor in defining/ measuring your productivity, what would you focus more on

• completing as many tasks as you could
• completing as many tasks as you could within a stipulated time-frame 

If you are among the organised and disciplined ones, then, in all probability, you would select the second option, which is an indicator of our efficiency, an essential element of Productivity. Now, herein lies a caveat - this option is good as long as the right duration is identified for the selected tasks. 

Let's do a bit of real-life self-reflection. Try and recall  

• that basic household chore that took forever to be completed
• that travel trip with the last minute travel preparation/ packing
• that report/ article / form that you somehow managed to submit minutes before the close of the submission deadline 
• paying of the phone/ internet bill just in the nick of time, right when it was about to be disconnected  

Given more time, we all, can recall plenty of similar instances as above. All the above mentioned instances and similar ones, point to the simple fact that, so many of us, on many occasions, tend to meet deadlines, just in the nick of time i.e. during the last moment. Surprisingly, the point of deliberation here is not about our time management skills but about 

• our attitude to task completion
• our judgement in assigning time-lengths to various identified tasks.  

Time consciousness is not only about finishing/ completing tasks in time but also about how much time we assign to each of the identified task. 

To set the tone for introducing a productivity tool that helps us be time consciousness in the right sense, i propose the following question to you

Have you ever felt/ realized that you could have completed(finished) a particular task/ activity much before the deadline (allotted time)?

The question may sound simple and may elicit a much simpler answer by way of YES or NO, but a deeper analysis of the above would throw open many interesting and useful insights about our approach to task completion. I will take recourse to a law, known as PARKINSON'S LAW, to help understand our approach to task completion and how it could impact our productivity.  Let's gain a better understanding of Parkinson's Law

About Parkinson's Law 

Parkinson's Law states that the "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". This means that whatever duration of time we assign to a task, the "task" would get finished in that much time only. Assuming you assign a timeframe for finishing a project, come what may, the project would tend to consume that much time (as assigned) for its completion. Irrespective of the nature or size of work/ task, the Parkinson's Law will always hold true. Simply put, whatever amount of time is made available for a task(work), all of it (time) would be used to accomplish that task.

The Parkinson's Law was proposed by the British scholar, C. Northcote Parkinson. The first reference to the law was made him in his essay published in The Economist in 1955. This was followed by a republish of the mentioned essay alongwith other essays in the book titled "Parkinson's Law and other studies in Administration" in the year 1958. The first published essay on the subject (in 1955) had reference to public administration in context of existence/ application of Parkinson's Law. A very simple explanation of the law is provided through an example, right in the first paragraph of the essay. The example is

C. Northcote Parkinson spent a lot of time with the British Civil Service and that's where he started observing the functioning of the bureaucracy and came up with Parkinson's Law, a satirical take on the bureaucratic expansion. Regarding the ever increasing staff growth in the bureaucracy, he mentioned that "the number of the officials and the quantity of the work to be done are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed is governed by Parkinson's Law, and would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish or even disappear".

Application of Parkinson's Law

Ever since the first mention of the Law, the Parkinson's Law has permeated in every conceivable domain of human working and has found great application in time management and productivity. The Law has great application in bureaucratic/ governmental setup, organisational setup and at an individual also. Here, in this post, i am  going to touch upon how Parkinson's Law impact personal productivity. Lets revisit the earlier question

Have you ever felt/ realized that you could have completed(finished) a particular task/ activity much before the deadline (allotted time)?

Viewed in context of the Parkinson's Law, the realisation (when answered YES to the above question) could lead us to reflect upon the the following three aspects pertaining to the question

• the type of task - simple or complex
• time allocation aligned with the type of task (simple or complex)
• identification of all the additional activities/ tasks apart from the main task

Elaborating on the above three aspects, Parkinson's Law states that many a times when we err in deciding a timeframe or time-length for a task,(most of the times, it's about overestimating the duration for a simple task), we still tend to finish in within that overestimated time only and not earlier. To reiterate, if we read through the first paragraph of the essay, we could get a clear sense about how even a simple and basic task could be stretched to the extent of making it fill the full duration allotted for it. 

Likewise, isn't that the case with us also, when all those small/ basis tasks take eternity to finish/ get completed, and the best part being that as we tend to work on these tasks, we also ensure to fit them tight in their respective time buckets. In all this fitting and filling, little do we realise that we have created a crevice in our work execution to let in complacency, time-wasters, stressors and like, which, in no way, aid our productivity. 

A case in point (applicable to so many of us), which is so apt for this VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world that we live in, is when we sit down to have our breakfast (or for that matter, any meal during the day). During the breakfast time, our constant companion is our smartphone. Ideally, 10-15 minutes is the effective "breakfast time" but that extended/ stretched 30 minutes allotted by us for the same (breakfast) is to accomodate our smartphone screen time. The repercussion of all this is that a delayed beginning to the start of our work day leads to building up of stress and anxiety in us and that adversely impacts our productivity.

Usually, when we sit down to plan, we tend to become generous in our time allocation (even for simple tasks which we know could be completed in a shorter time frame). Our calculation of total time allocation for an activity is the sum of effective "doing" time and the buffer that we build in. What is important in this context is not what comprises this buffer but whether we need this buffer at all because if we have a buffer then, according to Parkinson's Law, we are gonna consume it as well alongwith the effective "doing time" for a task !

When i am blogging then i ensure that i create very realistic timelines for the different stages of blog writing. Rather than straightaway arriving at a cumulative time frame for publishing my blog post, i adopt a modular approach of specifying individual time frames for each of the different stages of work related to publishing of the blog post. This strategy works for me as i don't tend to get carried away by mixing different stages.

So, no more brooding over missed deadlines and opportunities lost. Get "time-realistic" about all your task/ activities and be on the road to enhanced productivity ! 

N.B. - The images used in this post/ article have been sourced from the internet. 

The post also contains some affiliate links and i may earn some commission for my endorsement, testimonial, and/ or link to any product or service from this post