Aug 2, 2021
Today’s episode dives into Parkinson’s Law and its two main components. Firstly, work expands to fill the time allotted, meaning that if you give yourself a certain amount of time to work on a given task, you’re going to use up all that time to get it done. For example, if you tell yourself you need to make a phone call by the end of the week, you’ll switch back and forth between tasks until you finally arrive at the end of the week and rush to get it done. The second piece of Parkinson’s law states that time will be spent inversely proportional to the importance of an activity. In other words, we typically spend less time on important tasks, like creating a business plan, than we do on unimportant tasks, like scrolling through social media.
Matt and Garrett explain why Parkinson’s Law is primed to be broken, and how Ninjas can go against it by making the absolute best use of their time and spending it in a highly productive, highly focused, highly motivated frame of mind. Top agents look at which tasks are going to produce the biggest and best returns, and make those first priority with no negotiation. Our hosts also discuss the importance of using a schedule to give yourself set times to work on certain goals, rather than leaving your calendar open-ended and allowing for distractions. This way you're setting yourself up to work with maximum efficiency within that devoted time block, and you’ll be able to fully concentrate on your other Ninja Systems later on, or even enjoy events in your personal life, without having unfinished projects looming over your head. Accountability partners can also help you stay on task and be on purpose with your hours. And most importantly, being aware of Parkinson’s Law is the first step to overcoming it.
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Episode Highlights:
- A reminder to submit your topic requests and suggestions on the Ninja Selling Podcast Facebook group
- Today’s topic is about Parkinson’s Law and how to maximize the way you manage your schedule and time
- The first part of Parkinson’s Law is, “Work expands to fill the time allotted”
- If you give yourself a certain amount of time to work on something, you’re going to use up all that time
- You’re spending mental time and energy thinking about a given task up until the moment you get started
- If we had just hammered it out and completed the job right away, we wouldn’t have spent all that time with it looming over us and taking up mental space
- Then we can actually be more efficient as we tackle other tasks as well
- Real estate review is a great example of this
- Switching between tasks also wastes time
- Give yourself a set time to work on something instead of leaving it open-ended and allowing for distractions (e.g., allotting 45 minutes to complete your Monday morning agenda rather than letting it drag out for a day and a half)
- You incur an Opportunity Cost when you allow things to take up more time than is necessary
- Put goals on your calendar and schedule time to work on them instead of leaving the completion date vague (e.g., “I’ve got to get that done this summer”), otherwise it will keep getting pushed off over and over again
- Be reasonable and give yourself enough time to complete a task, but Garrett is also up for the challenge to see if you can actually get things done faster than you think
- Part Two of Parkinson’s Law is that time will be spent inversely proportioned to the importance of the activity
- Business plan is a good example of this - we often spend more time scrolling through Facebook than we do focusing on developing a business plan that will create direction and growth
- Another example is that we often choose to spend our time and energy picking up fast food instead of cooking healthy meals at home that will nourish our bodies
- Prioritize the Ninja Nine, run the system of a weekly routine, and you’ll see incredible results
- Top producers go against Parkinson’s Law as they make the absolute best use of their time and spend it in a highly productive, highly focused, highly motivated frame of mind
- They look at which tasks are going to produce the biggest and best returns, and that’s what gets their time with no negotiation
- If you don’t focus on the most important tasks, they’ll quickly find themselves in equilibrium with unimportant tasks, and you definitely do not want that
- This ties back to our episode about Extreme Ownership and having discipline in your life
- Ask yourself if you had integrity today and showed up for the things you said you were going to do
- Try to practice this and make sure you schedule time for important activities
- If you take care of these first, it leaves plenty of time for your Hour of Power, customer service calls, etc.
- Accountability partners can be incredibly helpful (unless they let you off the hook)
- If you tell yourself you are finished at 6 o’clock, you’ll be more efficient with the time you’ve given yourself instead of letting it spill over into all hours of the night
- Having a detailed schedule will help you do this - don’t just write “Ninja Activities” between 8 and 10 o’clock
- This is called not being on purpose with those hours
- The first step is to experiment with your calendar and analyze what works for you
- Remember that it will constantly change and evolve based on what’s going on in your life
- But making sure you’re scheduling enough time to get everything done means that you can focus and be present in other areas of your life, rather than being distracted by everything you need to do later
- Be aware of Parkinson’s Law and know that you can overcome it
Quotes:
“If you have enough time to do something, naturally that’s just what we do.”
“Your brain is actually burdened with it not being done, which stops you from being able to run at the highest efficiency with the other tasks.”
“You need to set time aside, you need to focus on it, schedule it and get it done, get it completed. Because as of right now, we've got no deadline on it, we have dreams of this thing we want to do. And the reality is it's just taking time and energy and effort to be successful moving forward. Because again, it will expand, it will keep expanding and keep expanding until it has to be done.”
“I think there are things we can get done way faster than we ever imagined.”
“So we'll spend less time on important tasks and more time on unimportant tasks.”
“It's funny how we interpret things of what I have time for and what I don't have time for.”
“I think you can also make sure that those 30 minutes are in a high productive zone of doing that important task, versus, let's say, 25 of minutes of that being done doing unimportant things.”
“I think the law is primed to be broken. And I think that if you're running without focus, this is how everything just kind of equalizes out. This is how the majority of the population runs their life, is time being spent inversely proportionate to the importance of the activity.”
“I do think highly focused, highly motivated, top producers in anything that you're setting your heart into, they go against this law. Because they are going and starting their days and saying, Okay, what are the things that are going to produce me the biggest and best returns that I have for the future here? And that's what gets their time with no negotiation.”
“They're approaching it along the lines of, Nope, this gets my time, first and foremost, upfront. And if I have time for the unimportant activities, I will let them kind of fill the void.”
“[The Monday morning agenda] is a very important activity. And it gets so little time, particularly when you let that time just expand. And man, if you contracted that, and just took care of that...it's going to help you take care of showing up for an Hour of Power, customer service calls.”
“Now it's not just you letting yourself down, it's letting somebody else down, which is way more powerful. We are way more inclined to let ourselves down before we let somebody else down. And that's why accountability partners work so incredibly well.”
“If you can help yourself get to that level of intensity internally, where you're not condemning yourself, but you're being honest with yourself, you're going to be able to control this a lot more.”
“What's so interesting about that person that gives themselves 24 hours, and if I need to, I'll be up till three in the morning - some of the most efficient people I know, that are cranking out really high levels of business, are done by 6 o’clock.”
“This is not available time to work, which means you become more efficient with the time that you've given yourself.”
“When you watch somebody who's struggling with the Ninja Nine, I'll be like, Show me your schedule. And we'll get into their schedule. And their schedule says from 8 to 10 o'clock, it just says Ninja Activities - just wide open Ninja Activities between this time.”
“This is called not being on purpose with those hours.”
“It needs to be scheduled out so you have a start time and a finish time. You can complete it rather than this, I'm just going to fill the Ninja stuff in this time. And you wonder why you're not getting it all done. You wonder why you're floundering. You wonder why you're stressed out and last minute trying to cram stuff in. That simple thing will change your calendar.”
“Acknowledge that this law exists, and then acknowledge that you can break it. You can overcome this one… Having awareness of [Parkinson’s Law] helps you recalibrate.”
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