Parkinson’s Law: How to Manage Your Time More Effectively

Have you ever been given an assignment for an essay that’s due in a month, but waited until the last few days to write it? Or maybe you’ve had to give a work presentation at the end of the week, but put everything together an hour before you had to give it? Or maybe you’ve set a big goal for yourself to get completed in five years, but don’t seem to be making any progress?

If you’ve ever experienced this kind of procrastination, you’ve experienced Parkinson’s Law.

Parkinson’s Law is a theory developed by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in an essay published in The Economist in 1955. Cyril wrote his essay after spending a lot of time in the British Civil Service where he noticed tasks took up as much time as they were allotted.

Cyril wrote that:

“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Essentially, Cyril saw that if someone was given a certain amount of time to complete a task, they would complete it within that amount…