Apply Parkinson's Law

Apply Parkinson's Law

Set artificial deadlines shorter than available time to force focus, eliminate gold-plating, and prevent work from expanding to fill the time you give it.

Why This Is Best Practice

Adopted by: C. Northcote Parkinson observed the law in British civil service (1955); it was later applied to knowledge work by Tim Ferriss in The 4-Hour Workweek (2007) and is standard in agile sprint methodology. Fixed-length sprints exist precisely because unbounded time inflates scope.

Impact: In a classic experiment, students given 3 hours for an assignment produced work of equal or better quality than students given 1 week, while investing a fraction of the time (Ariely & Wertenbroch, 2002). Artificial deadlines compress decision-making and eliminate the perfectionism that consumes marginal hours.

Why best: Most work has a natural point of "good enough" that arrives well before the available deadline. The surplus time is spent on diminishing-returns polishing, second-guessing, and scope creep. Imposing a shorter deadline forces the question: "What is the minimum viable version of this?"

Steps

Step 1: Estimate the natural deadline, then cut it

For any task or project:

1. Ask: "How long would this take if I had all the time in the world?"
2. Ask: "What is the actual deadline?"
3. Set a working deadline at 50–70% of available time

If the task is due Friday and it's Monday, commit to finishing by Wednesday. The 2 spare days become a quality buffer — not working time.

Step 2: Define "done" before starting

Parkinson's Law inflates scope because "done" is vague. Before starting any task, write one sentence defining what done looks like:

# BAD (vague, expands indefinitely)
"Work on the report"

# GOOD (terminates clearly)
"Report has an executive summary, 3 data charts, and a recommendations section — 
 max 4 pages, reviewed once for typos"

Without a definition, done never arrives.

Step 3: Use timeboxing for individual tasks

For tasks without fixed external deadlines, impose time limits in advance:

Task type	Default timebox
Email triage	20 minutes, twice per day
Meeting prep	15 minutes
First draft of any document	60–90 minutes
Code review	45 minutes
Research / investigation	90 minutes, then commit to a conclusion

Set a visible timer. When it expires, ship what you have or explicitly decide to extend — but the extension must be a conscious choice, not drift.

Step 4: Apply to projects via artificial milestones

For projects spanning days or weeks:

1. Take the project deadline and divide it into thirds
2. Assign deliverables to each third
3. Treat each third's deadline as a real external commitment

If the project is 6 weeks: week 2 = prototype, week 4 = review draft, week 6 = final. The intermediate deadlines prevent everything from piling up in week 6.

Step 5: Identify and cut expansion behaviors

Common ways work expands to fill time:

• Perfectionism: polishing slides for a 15-minute internal meeting to presentation-quality
• Research spiral: reading 3 more articles before writing, indefinitely
• Scope creep: adding "while I'm at it" features beyond the original ask
• Premature optimization: refactoring code that works before the feature ships

When the timebox expires, name the expansion behavior explicitly: "I am polishing, not finishing." Then stop.

Rules

• Set the working deadline before starting, not after underway
• Define done before starting — a task without a completion criterion never ends
• Timeboxes must be honored; extensions require explicit re-authorization, not passive continuation
• Apply Parkinson's Law to meetings: default to 25 minutes (not 60); default to 12 minutes (not 30)
• Use the reclaimed time for recovery or the next frog — not more work

Examples

Email: Limit to two 20-minute blocks per day. The constraint forces you to batch, prioritize, and write concisely. Unlimited email access expands to fill all available time.

Sprint planning: 2-week sprints exist because unbounded projects balloon. The sprint deadline forces the team to commit to scope and prevents infinite refinement.

First draft: Give yourself 60 minutes to write a rough first draft. The resulting draft is usually 80% of the final quality at 20% of the time a "take as long as needed" approach would consume.

Common Mistakes

Setting deadlines without a done definition: An arbitrary deadline on a vague task produces rushed, incomplete work. Define done first, then compress the timeline.

Cutting the deadline so aggressively that the work is genuinely incomplete: 50–70% of natural time, not 10%. Parkinson's Law compresses padding; it does not eliminate necessary work.

Applying it to safety-critical or high-precision work: Architectural decisions, security reviews, and medical documentation should not be rushed to save time. Apply elsewhere.

Not protecting the reclaimed time: If you finish in 3 days instead of 5, that surplus is value only if it isn't immediately filled with new low-priority tasks.

When NOT to Use

• Deep research where thorough exploration is the deliverable: timebox the session, not the conclusion
• Creative work in early generative phases: constraints help, but premature deadline pressure on ideation closes down divergent thinking
• Complex debugging: bugs take as long as they take; use the technique for writing up findings, not finding them