Focus your time and get it done!

Ever spent hours planning a vacation, only to get absolutely nothing done? That was me, just recently. I figured I’d get a head start one morning and book a hotel and a rental car before work. Seemed like a smart plan—until I fell down the rabbit hole of endless tabs, reviews, and price comparisons. Four hours later, I hadn’t booked a thing, I was scrambling to get ready, and I barely made it to work on time.

Have you noticed that when you have a lot of time to do something, it often will take you the entire time to do it? even though you realistically could have completed the task much faster if you had less time? This is explained by Parkinson’s law, a concept identified by British Naval historian, C. Northcote Parkinson, which says “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Several problems result from this time filling tendency: 1. we procrastinate because we think we have so much time, but then end up rushing to do it all at the end; 2. we overestimate what we can do in the available time and make project goals or tasks more complex than they need to be for the time we have, which can lead to inefficiency. How do you solve for this? Well, follow these steps:

1.      Take a few minutes to process what it will realistically take to complete the task/project. (What does the task entail? What needs to happen for you to get from start to finish)

2.      Break down the task/project into bite sized pieces with smaller chunks of the time allotted. (By thinking through the activity and then realistically breaking it down to see how much time is needed for each step, you will be less likely to overcomplicate or oversimplify the process.)

3.      Add dates and/or time stamps to each chunk.

4.      Get it done!

5.     Make yourself accountable. Let someone know (your boss, a friend or colleague, or coach) who can then keep you accountable and help you to stick to your plan.

Going back to my vacation planning... after 4hours of searching and not making any progress, I was frustrated. later that day, I decided to create two distinct chunks, one for car search and another for hotel search and allotted 30 mins to each search. Then I added a date (the following day) and a time stamp (in the morning from 7-8am), and I sent a text to my travel buddies that I would have the options out to them by 830 am the following morning. Guess what? I got it done!

If you need more help with this or want a coach for accountability, please contact me @grayecac@gmail.com.