In the process of setting my goals for this year I have come across this bit of wisdom that made me look at my goals in a whole different way. It's called Parkinson's Law, and it states:
"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion"
I love this because it puts into words a phenomena I have seen occur thousands of times in my life. Here's a little scenario for you that has happened hundreds of times in our home.
Monday-Friday: Supposed to clean the house because mother-in-law is coming on Saturday. I start cleaning the kitchen counters and somehow get caught up working on one corner of the counter. All I accomplish in 5 days is a square foot of clean counter and tornado-ridden rest of the house.
Saturday Morning: Mother-in-law coming in 20 minutes. Clean, vacuum, sweep the entire house and have it sparkling clean by the time the MIL gets here.
This perfectly illustrates Parkinson's law (okay, I'm sure not perfectly, but I think it's pretty good). When I have a week to clean the house and don't set any specific time limits for specific tasks I end up getting distracted and caught up on one thing. The house does not get clean.
When I have 20 minutes to clean the house, it is cleaned.
In the past I have always been timid about goal setting because I didn't want to overdo myself. But this has made me realize that making more goals for myself rather than less is the way to go. So for my 2011 To Do List (aka goals) I plan on adding lots and lots of things to the list and making sure I define my time frame so I don't get too carried away on one thing.
I am so excited to have stumbled upon this Parkinson's law. For years I have struggled with time management and I feel like this is exactly what I needed to be reminded of. I hope this helps someone else out there.
2 comments:
Oh man, a big amen to this. Like the nerd I am, I use an app for all my tasks and goals. It's no surprise that those with a due date end up getting done, and those left for "someday" always sit there forgotten.
I've found that even scheduling them down to the hour I'll get them done, like, "today at 5:00 I will spend twenty minutes doing such and such a thing". What's nice about this method of having it written down and stored somewhere is it frees my brain from freaking out over it until it comes time to actually do the task.
Yup, I totally do that. I put minute amounts next to every to-do item and I set my alarm for that amount of time while I'm doing it. What apps do you use for keeping track of your goals and such?
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