The exam date is scheduled for next month, and you have a lot to learn, but you thought of relaxing and hanging out with friends and studying later.
The project submission is due next week, and you know you can finish it earlier, but you chose to watch cat videos on YouTube instead.
If this sounds familiar to something you tend to do, then you’re not alone.
But let’s take a moment to think about how you would react when you’re only a few days to the exam or hours left to submit that project at work. Naturally, you’ll be more focused, avoid comforts and work hard to get things done on time. In other words, you would strive to achieve the same result that would take you months within a few days.
So what we experience in all these scenarios is Parkinson’s law, which states: work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
In simpler words, the more time you have at hand to do something, the more time it will take to finish it.
We all experience Parkinson’s law in our daily life. But productivity is what we strive for. So here are some ways to work past the effects of Parkinson’s law.
Break down your goals
Whenever you want to achieve a big goal, break it down into small achievable tasks.
Be it completing that final thesis for your master’s or meeting project deadlines at work. This trick will work wonders for you.
For example: When I’m about to write a 2500 word blog post, instead of tackling it as a single task, I break it down into small tasks – research, structuring, writing and proofreading. This approach helps me finish the blog on time.
But suppose If I were to approach the blog as a single task. In that case, I might feel overwhelmed and ditch the work for later and spend time watching videos on YouTube or playing HayDay on my smartphone, which would surely leave me less time to finish it on time.
So it’s always best to break down goals into small tasks and complete them.
Set a personal deadline
Set your personal deadline earlier than the actual project deadline.In this way you can avoid last-minute changes and give space to incorporate new ideas.
I always try to set personal deadlines for the task at hand a day before the actual project deadline. This also helps me find work-life balance.
Reward yourself
It’d be an excellent idea to reward yourself with something after completing your task earlier than your deadline. The reward can be anything, from having that chocolate cake out of the fridge to letting yourself have some break and play video games.
I reward myself after a task by binge watching tech videos on YouTube, playing guitar or simply indulging in web browsing.
But recently, to make my rewards more colorful, I started using Forest. It’s a productivity app that really helps reduce phone usage and frees up time to study or work without distractions.
The concept of the app is simple. The app showcases a plant that grows every time you finish a task. You can choose which type of plant you like to grow and get rewarded every time you finish the task with a new healthy plant and reward points. But the catch is if you try to use your phone in the middle, your plant will wither and die. So naturally you won’t be able to use your phone.
The most amazing and cool feature that made this app so attractive to me is that, after you gather 2500 reward points, the Forest app will let you exchange your reward points with a real tree which they will plant for you.
If you’re someone who wants to focus more on work and need that extra inspiration, then I suggest you get the Forest app from your app store and skyrocket your productivity and enjoy the side perks of making the planet greener in the process. 😀