Cyril Northcote Parkinson was an English historian who worked for many years in british public administration. His experience in his work allowed him to publish a book in 1957 entitled “Parkinson’s Law and other administrative research”. In this book, he formulated his famous law, which is in fact not one, but several.
Parkinson has carefully observed the way work develops in state facilities, from his daily experience he was able to discover models that allowed him to define his basic principles. Parkinson’s law can be summed up in three fundamental assumptions:
- ? You like life Then.
- If you love life.
- Don’t waste your time.
- Because time is the good thing about life.
- -Benjamin Franklin-.
Since its inception, experts in the field have repeatedly demonstrated the validity of Parkinson’s law, which has also served as a guide to propose new ways of working and managing time in productivity areas.
The main application of Parkinson’s law is time management. His first statement reads: “The work takes place until it fills the time available for its realization. “This means that if you have an hour to complete a task, you will use one hour to complete But if you have a month, it will take you a month.
The truth is that every day we are attending the validity of this law: for example, when students have two or three months to deliver a job, but end up doing so 24 hours before the due date. Or when you need to complete a professional task in the afternoon and defever until a few hours before the preset close, and during that time, you do everything you haven’t done before.
This principle is linked to another statement Parkinson called “the law of deferral. “He says that when we have time, there will always be a tendency to postpone everything that needs to be done. But why is this happening? Simply because time is a very subjective concept, it depends much more on our inner perception than on the actual passage of hours.
Parkinson also noted that the more time we spend on a task, the more complex it becomes and the harder it is to complete it. If we feel that there is a lot of time to go, we look more at the details and, in general, turn the edges around, trying to cover even the smallest aspects of the task. However, if we have little time, should we get our hands dirty?without going so much spin around on the subject.
Parkinson also noted that the least important problems are those that end up occupying most of the time, so its third important statement: the time spent on any agenda item is inversely proportional to its importance.
Apparently, relevant topics require a serious attitude and require specific approaches, so they need to be sent more efficiently. On the other hand, insignificant topics make everyone want to participate and say everything they can think of, so we spend more time with them.
Although Parkinson’s Law was defined after examining bureaucracy, the truth is that it applies to almost everyone, and this not only involves aspects related to time management, but extends to other areas of life, such as spending or organizing physical spaces.
Parkinson points out that “expenses are increasing to cover all income. “Does this mean that no matter how much you earn, you’ll always find a way to be at the forefront?And even with the debts. A person can live off a certain income without any problem, if their income increases, that doesn’t mean they will now have a surplus, but will organize their finances in a way that’s useless.
The result of all these rules of conduct is very ineffective: time and money are never enough. However, if we look closely it is because of the bad way we handle them, in fact, this article you are reading was written following Parkinson’s recommendation: divide the work into subtasks and set a deadline to complete them. I’m done in the middle of the 20s, what if you try too?