Try a “Reverse Parkinson’s Law” Day to Flip Your Productivity Levels for the Better

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the amount of time we allow for its completion.

My attempt at explaining Parkinson’s in a doodle…

This law was the zeitgeist of my high school and college years. If an assignment was due in 2 weeks, it would be done right at the 2 week mark and rarely a minute sooner.

The cool thing about this law is that it doesn’t just work in the negative sense.

By compressing the time allotted to complete a task, we can often surprise ourselves by completing things far sooner than we anticipated.

So, I want to propose a challenge: reduce a work day this week by at least half. If you usually log 8 hours per day, try working 4 or fewer one day this week.

Fortunately, many of us don’t have to go out of our way to make this happen. With 4 kids, 2 cats, and 2 dogs, it’s rare that I work a full week uninterrupted.

So next time you have a teacher’s meeting at noon or need to leave the office early, lean into it and enjoy it. See how much you can get done in a half day of work (ideally 4 hours or less).

What You’ll Likely Notice

I think you’ll learn a couple of things in the process that will be helpful going forward.

1. You’ll notice that you’ve been dragging your feet a bit. This doesn’t mean your lazy or slacking off; it just means that we rarely perform at our peaks without realizing it.
2. You’ll notice any flaws in your prioritization of tasks. By implementing a half-day, you’ll notice that not every task is created equal. The things that you feel must be done in the time allotted will start to stand out. These are the tasks that should take top priority going forward.
3. You’ll notice opportunities for delegation. When we have a full day to work, we find “filler tasks” that seem productive, and we do them without thinking. When you have less time, these filler tasks either don’t get done or you find a way to get them done without spending your time on them. The tasks that you can and should pass off to an assistant, freelancer, or agency will stand out on your reverse Parkinson’s Law day.
4. You’ll notice things that you should stop doing all together. Do, delegate, or ditch. That is a little task matrix I’ve always lived by. Some tasks are so ineffective that they don’t merit our time or the paid time of others. It can take more than just a day to notice that something isn’t worth doing anymore, but you may see a few things that merit potentially being ditched.

What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments!