Friday, May 22, 2009

parkinson's law...

Have you heard of Parkinson's Law? Well, Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

What does that mean?

It means that if you allow one hour to clean your office, it'll take one hour to get it clean. It also means that if you allow just 20 minutes to clean your office, it'll take just 20 minutes to get it done. Or if it does take you longer to do it, it will be just a fraction longer than the allowed time.

Either way, you still SAVE time.

On a recent to trip, the “free parking” that I have become accustom to in my suburban setting was full! I had to actually pay for parking!!

Fortunately I was able to find a spot (without parallel parking!) however it had exorbitant rates per 15 minutes! I had several errands to run but I was determined to only use 30 minutes. So, I parked, got out of my car and was in and out of every place I needed to go in record time.

And yes, I got everything don in just 30 minutes!

Now if I'd had free parking, it probably would have taken me upwards of 90 minutes to run the same errands because I would have browsed more, been more indecisive and probably even stopped to chat with people along the way.

Not that any of those things are bad…but they do tend to waste a lot of time.


For the next week, I'm going to challenge you to apply Parkinson's Law in 3 ways.

1. If you have internet, set a timer and reduce the amount of time you spend browsing.

2. If you usually take two hours to clean your house, set a timer and only allow one hour.

3. If you usually take one hour to sort through all the paper in your house, take just 30 minutes.

Are you up for the challenge?

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