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Parkinson’s law
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian Parkinson wrote in 1955.
And it doesn’t apply only to work. It applies to everything that needs doing.
977
4.58K reads
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The efficiency trap
Rendering yourself more efficient—either by implementing various productivity techniques or by driving yourself harder —won’t generally result in the feeling of having “enough time,” because,
the demands will increase to offset any benefits. Far fro...
945
3.4K reads
Ten tools for embracing your finitude
- Adopt a “fixed volume” approach to productivity. It’s better to begin from the assumption that tough choices are inevitable and to focus on making them consciously and well.
- Focus on one big project at a time and see it to completion before moving on...
1.14K
1.95K reads
I’m not suggesting our troubles with time are somehow all in the mind, or that a simple change of outlook will cause them all to vanish. Time pressure comes largely from forces outside ourselves: from a cutthroat economy; from the loss of the social safety nets and family networks that us...
OLIVER BURKEMAN
904
3.25K reads
Hofstadter’s law
It states that any task you’re planning to tackle will always take longer than you expect.
In other words, even if you know that a given project is likely to overrun, and you adjust your schedule accordingly, it’ll just overrun your new estimated finishing time, too. It...
981
2.97K reads
Why boredom seems aggressively unpleasant
We tend to think of it merely as a matter of not being particularly interested in whatever it is we’re doing, but in fact, it’s an intense reaction to the uncomfortable reality of confronting your limited control.
You’re obliged to deal with how your experience is unfol...
912
2.84K reads
Acquire a reputation for doing your work at amazing speed, and you’ll be given more of it.
OLIVER BURKEMAN
954
4.66K reads
Procrastination of some kind is inevitable
The point isn’t to eradicate procrastination but to choose more wisely what you’re going to procrastinate on, in order to focus on what matters most. The real measure of any time management technique is whether or not it helps you neglect the right things.
- The ...
991
2.6K reads
There's never "enough time"
The truth is that it’s impossible to become so efficient and organized that you could respond to a limitless number of incoming demands. It’s usually equally impossible to spend what feels like “enough time” on your work and with your children, and on socializing, traveling, or e...
927
2.81K reads
The paradox of limitation
The more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets.
But the more you confront the facts of finitud...
1.02K
6K reads
A limit-embracing attitude to time
It means organizing your days with the understanding that you definitely won’t have time for everything you want to do, or that other people want you to do—and so, at the very least, you can stop beating yourself up for failing.
- Since hard choices are unavoida...
1.02K
4.35K reads
Arguably, time management is all life is. Yet the modern discipline known as time management—like its hipper cousin, productivity—is a depressingly narrow-minded affair, focused on how to crank through as many work tasks as possible, or on devising the perfect morning routine, or on cooki...
OLIVER BURKEMAN
943
9.54K reads
Consider all the technology intended to help us gain the upper hand over time: by any sane logic, in a world with dishwashers, microwaves, and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant, thanks to all the hours freed up. But this is nobody’s actual experience. Instead, li...
OLIVER BURKEMAN
923
5.68K reads
The bottomless bucket list
The modern world provides an endless supply of things that seem worth doing, and so there arises an inevitable and unbridgeable gap between what you’d ideally like to do and what you actually can do.
The internet makes this all much more difficult because it promise...
942
2.8K reads
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Parkinson’s Law
“It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote that opening line for an essay in The Economist in 1955, but the concept known as ‘Parkinson’s Law’...
Parkinson’s Law
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. So try placing artificial time limitations.
If we’re given three hours to complete a task that normally would take an hour, we’ll find a way to fill those three hours. However, when we’re down to the final thirty minut...
Parkinson's Law
It states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
It started from the observation that the duration of public administration expands to fill its allotted time span, regardless of the amount of work to be done. The same has been obs...
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