Happy Sunday Peeps,
After a little vacation this weekend (To good ol Belle River), I'm back and ready to go 🎇 For this weeks productivity hack I've decided to switch it up a bit. The past month I've focused solely on material tasks that someone could do to be more efficient and achieve their goals, but I felt like something was missing. It took a 3.5 hour car ride home to figure out what that is. While 90% of the drive I'm listening to music, the other 10% I'll have a mix of podcasts and motivational talks. In one of my motivational videos, someone mentioned a mindset shift that I've always believed in, Parkinson's Law. Without further ado, lets jump into it.
Productivity Hack: Parkinson's Law ⏳️
To keep it precise, Parkinson's Law states that:
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
In other words, if you give yourself more time than truly needed to complete a task, the time it takes you to complete said task will fill both the time originally intended and the bonus time you gave yourself. What started off as a good intentioned time extension, has turned into completely wasted time that you'll never get back.
When I first heard about this, I couldn't believe it was stated as a Law. "It's not like its impossible to fulfill your task in the time originally planned" Oh how I was wrong. Study after study has shown how this holds true. Studies have looked at businesses, different levels of government, and dozens of study groups to compare how the time allotted compares to the end result. In EVERY SINGLE CASE the people who put extra people on the job, or gave themselves more time than their peers, showed minimal improvements, while being less efficient in every way.
Why do I say this? Because luckily for us, it works in the opposite too. It's not hard to see either. Think of the last time you had to crush out an assignment with only an hour or two before the deadline. You had weeks to prep and of course you left it for 2 hours before midnight (The deadline). You threw on some headphones and grinded it out, getting an above average score that it took others weeks to get. How? Because you gave yourself a tighter timeline, while the others let themselves fall victim to the slow and inefficient version of Parkinson's Law.
How do we implement this in our daily lives I hear you ask 🤷♂️ It's all about mindset and timing. Anytime you have a task, think of the time it should take you to complete it. When you're planning your day/week, set yourself a deadline 10-25% less than that time and watch yourself fly. It's a stressful, highly intense method of productivity, but I promise that you'll meet your deadlines if the task is important enough for you.
Business Update 💼
Last week I told you that I had three tasks that if completed, would mean a huge success for my week. I have to say I set my standards a little high for a weekend where I had no time to work (I was catching up with the fam, give me a break 🙁). While I didn't complete all 3, I made enough progress that I'd say it was a success.
- The biggest task, completing the rough draft of my book was completed. All scratchy, handmade pages have been drafted in Canva and are ready to go for a editing process that I'm worries is going to take months.
- I've reached out to a few manufacturers for making samples of the book. I'm currently waiting on a few replies for pricing, material and production timelines until I pick one that I want to go with.
- For the Amazon and business bank account, I've created the Amazon account, and have rescheduled a call with the banker for this week. Hopefully I'm able to complete this by the end of the week.
For the rest of this week, I've truly put myself in a place of Parkinson's Law. I've booked time on Saturday to look over my book with some friends that are great at design and Canva. That being said there's a lot of touch ups I need to make before I feel confident enough to show anyone. I'll be dedicating the first two days of my weekend to edits, to make sure it's good enough for anyone's eyes come Saturday.
Jake's Schedule 🖊️
While the book is my primary focus, I have a lot going on outside my business. At my regular job, the 2 other supervisors are both on vacation, so I'll be doing triple time this week to make sure things go smoothly. On a personal note, I have a book club meeting on Saturday to go over 2 different books, and I haven't completed either of them!! It truly is a week of time crunches 😰
Set your deadlines tight and your standards high.
Good luck on your goals this week,
Jacob Kadar
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