Outsmart Your Brain: Using Parkinson’s Law to Stay Focused and Fast

TLTR⚡
Parkinson proposed the following theory of time:
“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
So tackle your tasks immediately and set yourself intentionally tight deadlines, so you don’t even get tempted to pad them with time‑wasters or distractions. You’ll find more insights and avoidance strategies in the article.

Basics

It’s no secret that our brain often gets in our way. The real question is: how can we protect ourselves from that and still stay productive?
Parkinson’s Law states: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
In theory, this means that if you have eight hours to complete your daily tasks, you will also need eight hours.

Now imagine you receive an urgent call around noon — chances are high that you’ll manage to finish your daily tasks in four hours (for the most part).
Or have you ever wondered why administrative appointments take so long? Civil servants’ performance cannot be measured, which means they have as much time as they have — without having to stick to meaningful deadlines.
Now that we know this, let’s look at how we can use it to our advantage in everyday life.

Arbeit dehnt sich in genau dem Maß aus, wie Zeit für ihre Erledigung zur Verfügung steht.

Tight Deadlines for Higher Productivity

To force yourself to stay focused on your project or task, set a realistic deadline — and then subtract at least 40%.
Of course, this is not the deadline you communicate to your client.
It’s always better to tell a client you finished earlier or more cost‑efficiently than planned, rather than having to admit you can’t meet the deadline or are over budget.

Even if you don’t hit your new internal deadline, you’ll still finish significantly earlier than you would have with the original one — and you avoid unnecessary postponing.

Short Deadlines and Scheduling Your Tasks

Long deadlines often tempt creatives into procrastination — something we want to avoid.
So try to finish projects and tasks ahead of time instead of pushing them to the last minute.

To keep your to‑do list from growing unnecessarily, complete small tasks that take less than 10 minutes as soon as possible.
If you have too many small to‑dos piling up, block dedicated time to clear them out so they don’t weigh you down or slow you down.

The Right Focus Technique

You’ve blocked time and want to work with full focus? Then do exactly that — and eliminate all distractions such as phone notifications, social media, Netflix, YouTube.
Choose a focus technique that works for you and simply start.
My personal recommendation is the tried‑and‑true Pomodoro Technique.
You can find more information on Pomodoro and focus methods here:
7 Tipps für ein fokussiertes Arbeiten

In Short

Knowledge is power — use your new insights and stay alert.
Your brain is not interested in exerting itself. Quite the opposite: it always tries to find the easiest and most efficient path, which often results in slowly suffocating your productivity — ending in the all‑too‑familiar procrastination.

In the context of Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s theory, this means you should pay close attention to how you spend your time and whether it’s actually being used efficiently — or whether your brain is trying to trick you.
So set tight deadlines and don’t let yourself get distracted.

“Just do it” is easy to say — but even easier to do.
Feel free to share your experiences or plans. Have you dealt with procrastination before, and how do you break out of it?