QUIKSUMMARY
Essence of the law: Space/time available is filled up with whatever is available rather than what is valuable.
The effect: We get busy (filled up timewise) instead of producing the highest desired results.
The solution: Decide what is most valuable and insert that into the space. (The Law Of Displacement: Insert something into a bathtub full of water and it will displace the water. Keep putting in more good stuff and the other stuff gets displaced.)
Do:
HEED THIS LAW OR...
Your life will be full of mediocrity, being "at the effect of" circumstances, and always being too busy to do what really matters. To have a good life, you must heed this law!
THE LAW
“The time spent on something will expand to fill the amount of time available.”
Or: “The space allowed will be filled up with whatever is most immediately available.”
Parkinson's Corollaries:
A vacuum sucks in whatever is closest and most available.
An empty time slot will be filled with crap, or what seems most urgent.
BEING A VICTIM OR A MASTER
We normally are the victims of "Parkinson's Law".
We automatically and unintelligently fill up the amount of time and space allowed.
We keep on ending up with a larger and larger house and higher and higher expenses and lots more "stuff", most of which adds very little. (In the Lifestyle section we look at changing that: "So here we look at all the "stuffs" to see what we can "manage" so it doesn't manage us.)
THE DEFINITION OF THE LAW
“The time spent on something will expand to fill the amount of time available.”
Or: “The space allowed will be filled up with whatever is most immediately available.”
This works for physical space also and maybe for eating and other excesses, where there is no cognitive, committed limit set.
SOLVING THE PROBLEM
Insert what is most important into the space (of your life) or nothing will happen.
See Stephen Covey’s book: First Things First.
"A project tends to expand with the time allocated for it." If you give yourself one thing to do, it will take all day. If you give yourself two things to do, you get them both done. If you give yourself a dozen things to do, you may not get 12 done, but you’ll get 7 or 8 completed."
If you take advantage of the corollary to Parkinson’s Law, you will insert into your life that which matters (in this case learning and creating your own power to be happy) first, and let the small stuff fall where it may.
"Shove more of that in and have less time for other things…"
PARKINSON’S LAW (whatever is available will be consumed or drawn in)
Use a 9 inch plate to eat off of. (Put the other ones in a remote place.)
Clean out your kitchen of all “bad” stuff; fill it up with good, easy to eat stuff.
Time
For those people looking for the “magic” bullet to having more time, they might want to look at why they are filling up so much of their time, when it is not a given that you must follow “Parkinson’s Law”.
“The space allowed will be filled up with whatever is most immediately available.” (The Law of the Vacuum) The amount of money spent will expand to take up the amount of money available (so take some away first!). The amount of time spent on a project will expand to fill the amount of time allotted. If there is time available during the day, we will fill it, but often not consciously.
Funny how that happens, but Parkinson’s Law allows you to set the amount of time that will be spent, to toss out items and put in there what you will, especially “buffer” days where you can just work on prep items and on planning, without interruption or pressure (often out of the office!).
Time spent need not expand to fill the amount of time available.
