How to avoid the pitfalls of Parkinson’s Law with your community building work
Why setting big deadlines for yourself can backfire.
I was reading Four Thousand Weeks (which I highly recommend) and in this book, the author Oliver Burkeman touched on this idea called Parkinson’s Law which means that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. This adage was named for Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who first described the phenomenon in a 1955 humor essay published in “The Economist.”1
A quick example of this would be to say you have given yourself a one-week deadline to pitch a new strategy for your community. You know that it should only take you a few hours of focus time to write this out, but you gave yourself some extra time just in case something comes up. However, since you know you can push this off for a few days, you end up filling your plate with other tasks that take up your time. Now this strategy document that should have only taken you those initial few hours to put together, ended up taking the full week that you allocated yourself for. This is the Parkinson’s law in effect.
Recognizing that I have experienced Parkinson’s Law plenty of times throughout my career, I wanted to dig deeper into finding and sharing tips on how we can avoid the pitfalls of Parkinson’s Law with our work as community builders.
Set deadlines that are practical
With keeping Parkinson’s Law in mind the next time that you and your team are organizing events, projects, or initiatives within the community, it’s best to set specific and realistic deadlines. Avoid giving too much time for tasks that could be completed more efficiently, because as we now know you’ll just end up doing more work within that time. Well-defined deadlines can create a sense of urgency and encourage members to focus on completing tasks within the allocated time.
Break your tasks down
Let’s face it, big projects can seem more daunting and time-consuming than they need to be. What happens is you get more overwhelmed and make less progress because of this. It’s always best to break down your larger community projects into smaller, manageable tasks with clear deadlines. This encourages you to be more efficient and also helps with steady progress on these tasks.
Delegate responsibility within your team
When there are a lot of different players on the team, it is very important that everyone knows their part. Who is the main decision maker? Who are the members that will be taking ownership? Clearly defining who is doing what will help ensure that the team knows exactly what they’re working on and can take ownership of their responsibilities.
Prioritize what’s important
Not every task is created equal and you should prioritize which tasks are more important in moving closer to project completion. One piece of advice that has worked for me is writing down all of the tasks that need to be completed and then either highlighting or marking each one with different colors or notes (#1, #2, etc.) and then breaking it down this way. Extra pro tip: Work with your manager on confirming the alignment of these priority tasks so that the whole team is on the same page.
Limit those meeting times
When possible, keep your community meetings focused and time-bound. Meetings that are shorter can end up being more efficient meetings which leads to more productive discussions and decisions. Avoid the tendency for meetings to expand in duration unnecessarily. I have found that meetings that exceed 30 minutes tend to drag on more than necessary. If you can keep yours to 30 minutes or less, the better off you’ll be. Another tip here is to keep the meeting agendas to a maximum of a few items. The more you add, the less focused you’ll be on the priority task(s) at hand.
Progress > perfection
Always encourage a culture of progress over perfection within your team. When you or others strive for perfection it can lead to overworking and unnecessary delays. I don’t mean to just ship things when they’re not finished, but we can all be a little better at trusting ourselves with the quality of work that we produce. So instead of focusing on perfection, put your attention on achieving meaningful milestones and continued improvement.
Check back in on your progress
One key way to prevent us from falling trap to Parkinson’s Law is to periodically evaluate the progress of the community initiatives that we created. Determine if certain tasks are taking longer than expected and whether adjustments are needed to stay on track. This review process can help identify inefficiencies and provide an opportunity to reallocate resources if necessary.
Expect the unexpected
A reminder that even the most well-intentioned plans sometimes go astray and that is just part of the game. This is why it is key to prioritize what is important because there will be times when items need to be re-shifted and when you have a list of your main priorities, it is going to be a lot easier to adapt and move quickly.
Don’t forget to celebrate you and your team’s accomplishments
Everyone loves to be celebrated and positive reinforcement goes a long way. When you and your team are hitting the milestones that you all set, take a moment to recognize and celebrate. This is especially true in helping maintain motivation and a sense of accomplishment, which in turn can help prevent tasks from dragging on unnecessarily. When people feel good about completing tasks, they’re going to want to keep that feeling going.
By now you should be more aware of Parkinson’s Law and how it can negatively affect your work by wasting time and creating inefficiencies. However, by keeping this concept in mind for the next time you work on a big project or task, you’ll be better equipped to optimize your time.
https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law