How to Use Parkinson’s Law to Your Advantage in the Creative Industry
Vol. 075
How to Use Parkinson’s Law to Your Advantage in the Creative Industry.
8hrs of work in 3hrs…If “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”, why don’t we just shorten our timelines?
A quick bite:
When it comes to working on our own creative businesses, when we HAVE the time, we TAKE the time. Simple as that...that’s Parkinson’s Law. Knowing this, why don’t we just shorten our timelines, enabling profoundly more output, and thus creative success?
Continue reading below…
Parkinson’s law has revolutionized how I approach time management and workload.
What is Parkinson’s law, why should you care, and how can you use it to your advantage?
But first, do either of these sound like you?:
You find yourself in the position where you have weeks (or even months) to do something, but you put it off to the very last moment. But, somehow, you always get it done.
Some days you have 1 million tasks that you need to do, and other days you literally have 2 little tasks… but somehow each of these scenarios ends up taking the entire day.
If either of these situations sounds like you, then you’re experiencing Parkinson’s law!
Parkinson’s law is a philosophical phenomenon that suggests that we are all a victim of our own (extended) timelines. It states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
When we HAVE the time, we TAKE the time. Simple as that.
I first experienced the true power of Parkinson’s Law when we knocked out the Native Roots branding project in literally ¼ of the time I expected it would take. For this project, we employed sprint-based timelines, shortening the time period we had to work, forcing quick, intuitive decision-making that was rooted in a sound brand strategy.
As studies in the professional setting have shown, the average employee is only productive for ~3hrs of their 8hr workday.
Isn’t that insane?!
This Inc. study literally suggests that if you worked hard for 3hrs, you could get the same amount done as when dilly-dallying through an 8hr day.
What if your entire workday was completed between 8-11am!? Woah…
Of course, studies such as this are generalizations. Quite frankly, these types of studies don’t factor the true need (early on, at the very least) to sacrifice a lot in order to make a self-employed creative career work; but, the essence of this idea still applies.
How do you apply Parkinson’s law?
As you cruise through this week, consider some sort of time blocking technique (the pomodoro technique is my favorite) as well as other tools that can help with automation and organization to help you be more proficient with your time.
Embracing Parkinson’s—massively shortening your timelines for a given task—will force you to eliminate distractions, find time for deep work and focus, and lean into your intuition.
It may feel hard to set timelines because you want “freedom and limitless creativity to think outside the box”—you want that hand drawn branding to be the best it could be.
The reality is, creative projects are far more successful when they have some sort of limitation. You need to set constraints or boundaries to work up against. You first have to start inside of a box in order to ever think outside of the box.
Time is one constraint that you have the most control over.
Remember, just because you have time to adjust or perfect something doesn’t mean that it needs to be adjusted or perfected. To embrace this notion is just the starting point…
My challenge to you:
Take a creative task that normally takes you a day (8hrs) and do it in half the time (4hrs). Hell, even try a quarter of the time (2hrs) You might be surprised by how little time you actually need to do some of the things you’re currently doing!
What changes and sacrifices do you have to make in order to accommodate this time constraint?
When using Parkinson’s Law for a graphic design or branding project:
Your process will likely have to change: maybe there’s less research or mood boarding.
Your concepting stage may be abbreviated: instead of exploring 8 thumbnail concepts and narrowing that down to 3D or R1, maybe you explore the best and present 2.
Your refinement/presentation might have to change: With less time, consider what are the minimum viable elements needed to tell your brand/project story.
We’ve leveraged Parkinson’s Law in a handful of our branding and logo design projects in the past. The branding for the coffee shop, The Wild, is a personal favorite result of this process.
Even if you don’t start applying this to your creative process, consider applying it to other parts of your business. Give it a shot, and let me know what you think!
Kick some ass out there y'all.
Cheers!
Adam
