Comments on: Why everything you thought you knew about Parkinson’s Law is wrong

By: workaholic

workaholic — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 08:16:41 +0000

I latelly discovered your blog which I think is really nice. Keep up the good work.

To the topic:
I use the Parkinson’s law for setting up schedules to avoid countless perfecting: Unless I have a deadline, I keep tweaking and perfecting my lessons – and skipping the other tasks. The deadline forces me to “do well-enough” to be satisfied and not to burnout on preparations as some of my teaching friends have gone.
But you’re right – too tight schedules can “flaw” your product. You haste to do in time and thus you omit important things. Here comes the David’s mention on planning: setting up a schedule forces you to check what lays ahead of you and therefore plan number of timeboxes more proprietly.

By: Jarkko

Jarkko — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 03:23:01 +0000

You’re right, the point about “is it done?” makes sense. So I suppose for people who want to polish their work to perfection it’s pretty important to have some kind of time limit…

But again, if you are one of those people who want to do their work as perfectly as they can, it can cause you to be unhappy with the results, and lower your motivation. But I guess that’s another discussion. :)

By: David

David — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:42:56 +0000

I think a given job may or may not be specially susceptible. In cases where it is a danger you provide closer management, more defined interim deadlines, or more carefully spelled out schedules. I don’t think it’s ever about changing the available time. You still plan for what it ought to take. You just need to be more aware of the potential to stretch.

In our business there are two kinds of issues with this. The first is just the normal tendency for things to expand. The second, applying more often to when creativity is involved – art – has the added dimension of “is it done?” In this scenario someone will keep tweaking for all the time allowed – even if really it could have been “done” long before. It’s an interesting facet to the original problem.

By: Jarkko

Jarkko — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 04:23:13 +0000

Thanks Grace!

I haven’t read the 4-hour Work Week yet, but I think I should. Or what do you think? Is the book worth all the hype it has been getting these last weeks and months?

By: Shine With Grace

Shine With Grace — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:43:35 +0000

Great post! Thanks for bringing up the topic. Since reading the 4-hour Work Week I’ve been pondering on the concept – and what to do… Somehow there is truth in it, say, I do tend to bring more stuff when I use a bigger bag, and do more research when more time is allowed for a project. So, does a tighter schedule helps? To a certain extend, yes. But it has to be reasonable. Compressing everything into an insanely tight schedule would only add pressure and harm quality, as you have rightly pointed out.

By: Jarkko

Jarkko — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:03:40 +0000

Petteri: Oh yeah, so the project is actually doable ;)

David: That’s an interesting point. But could you elaborate a bit on how you actually use the “law” for monitoring the progress? Do you mean that you look more closely to see if people are done with their tasks (and doing something else already), or do you use it for planning some minor deadlines?

To me it’s somehow quite hard to see this practice used in anything else than planning…

By: David

David — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 02:14:16 +0000

Isn’t this more about management of tasks than about their planning?

I’d never interpreted this as meaning I should move up deadlines, but rather that taking into consideration that work expands to fill available time is important when monitoring the progress of a task – to keep people moving forward without making deadlines too rigid or too tight, while at the same time not letting things go longer than they really need to go.

By: Petteri Hietavirta

Petteri Hietavirta — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:01:51 +0000

There are at least SR-71 and MIG-25 being capable to fly 3200+ km/h and . This would leave time for quick taxi ride and tax-free shopping :-)

Sometimes extreme requirements can create extraordinary designs. But usually hurrying in sake of hurrying leads to disasters.