Effective Deadlines

Parkinson’s Law states that a task will fill the time allotted to complete it (a concept I’ve mentioned here before). We’ve all experienced the phenomenon (which often comes under the guise of procrastination). I’ve seen it especially often as a teaching assistant; no matter how long I give to complete a quiz or test I’m proctoring, 95% of the students will use all of the allowed time (and often beg for extra time).

Now, people usually regard this truth as a negative thing, since it seems to lead to inefficiency and procrastination. Instead, let’s see how we can use Parkinson’s Law to help us work better. A useful corollary of Parkinson’s Law is the following:

Deadlines are catalysts for getting work done.

So many projects fall into the abyss of “I’ll finish that someday” because of a lack of concrete goals and deadlines. Of course, there must be consequences to the deadlines. This is an important lesson I learned from my experiment with batching. It’s very easy to push a task to the next batch if the only negativity which results is a few seconds of feeling guilty.

The best way to make deadlines stick is to involve other people. For example, telling your boss that a project will be done by Friday makes an effective deadline. Promising your customers a new product every month makes an effective deadline. People usually don’t seek these deadlines out, instead they grumble when they arrive. But you can create these deadlines easily by making promises to your colleagues and customers. It’s an effective tool for making your work more productive.

-III