Why I write so fast: Parkinson's Law
How I manipulate time to my advantage
🏷️ Categories: Time management, Writing, Procrastination
“‘We must hurry!’ said Mr. Wonka. ‘We have so much time and so little to do! No! Wait! Strike that! Reverse it!‘” ~ Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Several people have asked me how I manage to write so much while also reading, generating ideas, and still having time for many other things.
Currently, I write articles for Substack in Spanish and English, I write on Medium in English, on Quora in Spanish several times every day, and now I’m also planning to write on Zhihu and Jianshu, two Chinese social networks, so it would be present on very diverse platforms and in 3 languages. To this must be added the time it takes to read scientific information and the time it takes to generate ideas. On the other hand, I study languages, work and combine it with sports.
It seems impossible to have time for all of this.
But, in reality, it's possible. So, if you want to know how I manage to be so prolific, here's my strategy (and one you can use too to write more and for many other tasks in your life).
Parkinson's Law: “Intelligent Procrastination”
“The work expands until it fills all the time available for it to be completed.”
Hasn't it ever happened to you that you were given a lot of time to do a task and you ended up doing it at the last minute? It has happened to all of us, it is a universal occurrence and although here I will focus on explaining how I use it to write more, you can use it for any task in your life.
When I started writing in Substack it seemed rushed to write weekly. There was one week when for personal reasons I hadn't written anything all week and it was already Sunday. If I wanted to publish something on Monday I would have to write it in one afternoon. Do you know what happened?
I finished it that very afternoon, while relaxing with a cup of tea.
That's right, it turned out that it was possible to write the same thing in much less time.
What was happening here I have called “intelligent procrastination”, in other words, feeling that you are spending your time on something productive when you are actually wasting it. Parkinson's Law is very common, but we can turn it around.
How to use Parkinson's Law to your advantage
1. Establish tight deadlines
If something takes 5 hours and you think you can do it in 4, then do it in 2.
Okay, maybe you don't have to be so eager. The point is that if you force yourself to take less time you will end up speeding up the process in some way. This has been seen in tasks of all kinds such as sales, airport security checks, computer programming... (Latham & Locke, 1975; Marin et al., 2007; Kamma et al., 2013).
So, if you are interested in writing more, or in general, making better use of your time, don't write or do things indefinitely, limit the time per session and give your maximum.
This is how I went from writing weekly to writing a letter every other day.
2. Eliminate distractions
Make writing a sacred moment.
Out with notifications and out with anything that demands your attention. Attention is not recovered instantly, in psychology this phenomenon is called “attentional cost”. When you get distracted it takes a long time to refocus (Stothart et al., 2015). A simple phone notification can waste a lot of time.
By paying attention to only one task at a time and avoiding distractions you will see that at the end of the day you got everything done and had more time left over than ever. Don't die of information overdose by being aware of too many things.
3. Combine attention with rest
The key to a good performance is a great rest.
I like to manage my time in 50-minute writing intervals and leave 10 minutes of rest between each interval. If you expand your writing session indefinitely and without adequate rest, you end up more tired and writing less than if you stay less time but concentrated. I'll tell you a secret, when I come back from a walk I'm so inspired and refreshed that just 50 minutes is sometimes enough to have a draft full of good ideas.
Don't burn yourself out, spending 10 hours straight with your nose glued to the screen won't get you any further.
4. Divide the work
I don't like to sit down to write and wait for the muses to come.
Instead, I try to be clear about the steps I'm going to take, so I don't waste time looking for inspiration -walking in circles-. Personally, I start by generating ideas, often away from home. I save the ideas and then at home I generate the script and later I do research on the topic. The next session is the direct writing and editing session.
The times I've had the hardest time expressing myself have been the times when I wasn't clear about my ideas. If I can't take the first step firmly, how am I going to walk to the last step?
Soak in what's around you, soak it in until you're inspired and then go back and express it.
5. The more irrelevant, the longer
The most incredible thing about Parkinson's Law is that it relates to The Perfection Trap.
The more insignificant a task is, the longer it takes us to finish it in relation to its importance. In other words, we spend an exaggerated amount of time on unimportant details that take away a lot of time to attend to critical issues. This phenomenon has been my enemy since I started writing. Don't spend hours and hours trying to get the text perfect.
I did a test, I compared two versions of the same text. One that was already finished and another that I “improved” after almost two hours of “perfecting.”
Surprise, no trace of improvement, they felt exactly the same.
As you can see, this law can play in our favor or against us, you choose how to manipulate time. So why don't you try it?
See you soon, take care 👋❤️
📚 References
Kamma, D., Geetha, G., & Neela, J. P. (2013). Countering Parkinson’s law for improving productivity. ACM Digital Library. https://doi.org/10.1145/2442754.2442768
Latham, G. P., & Locke, E. A. (1975). Increasing productivity and decreasing time limits: A field replication of Parkinson’s law. Journal Of Applied Psychology, 60(4), 524-526. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076916
Marin, C. V., Drury, C. G., Batta, R., & Lin, L. (2007). Human Factors Contributes to Queuing Theory: Parkinson’s Law and Security Screening. Proceedings Of The Human Factors And Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting/Proceedings Of The Human Factors And Ergonomics Society . . . Annual Meeting, 51(10), 602-606. https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120705101007
Parkinson, C. (2002). Parkinson's Law, or The Pursuit of Progress. Penguin Modern Classics.
Stothart, C., Mitchum, A., & Courtney, Y. (2015). The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification. Journal Of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception And Performance, 41(4), 893-897. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000100
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