Can we disprove Parkinson’s Law?
Work expansion to fill time void
Disclaimer: This is nothing but the culmination of all the content available on the internet. To digest the message in its best interpretation at the cost of time for in depth explanations, kindly refer to the sources mentioned at the end of this write up.
Statement
Parkinson’s Law:
“work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”
History
Cyril Northcote Parkinson was born on the 30th July 1909 (almost 110 years prior to the day of publication of this article) in England. He developed an interest for history from a very young age. His studies on Naval History brought him several laurels. After his time in the army, he served as instructor in History in several institutions.
It was in 1958 that he published the subject of the article, Parkinson’s Law. This was actually part of a satirical article in the Economist — to voice his thoughts about the public administration and bureaucracy in the system.
Reality
This sounds like one of those statements that force you to disprove — except that you struggle to do so. It comes natural to procrastinate what is not urgent for life is a never ending cycle of requests and the mind deserves its due rest and respect. Even if there is no other task at the moment, your craving for a break tends to keep this Law alive even decades later.
Actually, the article that Mr. Parkinson wrote did not refer to human behavior but rather systems in place. The essence he tried to convey was that Growth can be unrelated to work in a bureaucratic organization. These growth factors he identified were: tendency to delegate work to subordinates rather than to handle oneself and to ensure hierarchical systems are there to make the process easier.
But does the problem exist for human behavior as well? I am one who believes so.
Solution
You procrastinate to meet the deadline. But what if the deadline was set earlier in your mind? And what if you were disciplined to follow it?
This is not easy but possible — in fact we call those who succeed to do so as Productive folks. Though it might seem as the solution for Parkinson’s Law, the ironic truth is that you actually just tricked your mind into following Parkinsons Law — just to meet the deadline in your mind!
Well, as you can see Parkinson’s Law need not be a curse if you are willing to control the deadline we all fear. It takes a strong work culture to build this attitude of setting mental deadlines to meet requirements.
Verdict
You can defeat Parkinson’s Law using Parkinson’s law — using a different deadline set in the mind and adhering to it. Regarding systems however, it will take much more reconfiguration to disprove the Law.
