As a student and later at work, I often wondered: what if I had had more time? ⏳
However, when I actually have more time available, the result does not change — quite the opposite. In particular, when I have plenty of time for a task, I tend to use all of it, ultimately wasting it.
When a deadline is close ⏰, however, my intensity and concentration increase considerably (I think this applies to everyone).
As a student, I put everything into the final week 🤪.
Gas Law 💨🫙
I named this phenomenon the "Gas Law":
Work is like a gas and time is like a bottle. If we put 100 ml of water 💧 into a one-litre bottle, we will see plenty of empty space left; a gas, however, would expand to occupy all the available volume.
Parkinson's Law ⏳
I later discovered that this observation (which most of us have made) had already been formulated in the 1950s by the British historian and writer Cyril Northcote Parkinson, author of the famous "Parkinson's law", which states:
"Work expands to fill all the time available for its completion".
Cyril Northcote Parkinson
In his essay "Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress", he reported observations made within the British civil service, where he had directly noticed the distinctive dynamics of bureaucratic systems.
Parkinson also described bureaucracies' tendency to grow regardless of the actual workload. This could, in fact, be a corollary of his law.
In the essay, Parkinson gives the example of a woman employed in the bureaucracy whose only daily task was to send a postcard. Despite the apparent simplicity of the assignment, she managed to fill an entire day carrying it out!
Time management ⏱️
I think finding the right-sized "bottle" for our activities is an art: it must not be too large, so that we do not squander time, or too small, to avoid excessive stress.
In practice, however, it is difficult to identify a universal rule, because there are activities in which procrastinating and allowing more time can help the creative process (just as the opposite can also be true).
The secret is to reach a state of flow (how to reach a state of flow) during work, at least for as long as it takes to achieve the desired result. 😉