Peter Drucker once said, “Until we can manage time, we can manage nothing else.”

And when it comes to managing time, nothing hits a home run like Parkinson's Law, which states, “work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.” It’s most visible when we allot far more time than necessary for a task, leading to procrastination or performing trivial tasks to fill time.

Like Pareto's Principle, this law can be seen in action almost everywhere. If you plan to organize your wardrobe in 2 days, then it will take 2 days. On the other hand, if you plan to do it in 2 hours, it will take 2 hours.

As you use timeboxing to plan your tasks, try to see things from the lens of Parkinson’s Law. How has your efficiency improved as you put a time limit on tasks?

P.S.: It should be obvious that Parkinson’s Law is not a strict mathematical rule. If a task is complex enough to take 1 hour, then reducing the allocated time by 30 minutes will not magically make it happen in an hour.