“Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.”

We’ve all felt it. 

You give yourself a week to complete a two-hour project and come Friday you’ll be scrambling to finish it. There’s probably two reasons for that:

1) Because you psyched yourself into making the task way more complex than it ever needed to be, and/or

2) Procrastination won out

Sure it’s doable every now and then, but if it’s happening to you every week it’s going to pile up and get exhausting. So what can we do to prevent it?

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1) Clearly outline your vision statement and drivers

Imagine a client just asked you to help them reorganise their Dropbox as part of the work you’re doing with them, but it’s ok just whenever you can get around to doing it. You’ve got no idea what’s in there, if it’s important or not or even why they need it done. 

How motivated are you feeling to dive on in there? Probably not very.

That’s why, at the start of a project you should plan out and make two things obvious for yourself:

•  The vision: what is the value of the project?
• The drivers: why does the project make sense for you?

Ensuring alignment in these factors will empower you and help you visualise the impact of the project and boost your motivation. 

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2) Understand what’s in and out of scope

Parkinson’s Law isn’t just about procrastination, part of it is literally having your work expand to fill the time you have. That’s the exact definition of scope creep.

Before you even begin the task/project, you should agree with yourself and the client about what’s in and out of scope so you’re better equipped to nip Parkinson’s Law in the bud. If you think of a rad new feature or the client comes back with an add-on to improve the end product, remind everyone that you agreed that kind of thing was out of scope. That’s not saying you can’t revisit those ideas, you can. Just… you know… after the main project is done. 

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3) Identify your trade-offs

Sometimes, despite your best efforts, problems pop out of the woodwork that threaten to throw you out of scope and off schedule. Before you begin any big project, identify your trade-offs, or any places where you’ve got a bit of wiggle room if you need to make last minute adjustments. Timing, scope and budget are your biggest players here.

For example, if you’re working on a very budget-sensitive project, there’s absolutely no way to get around that money component, and you might have to make trade-offs in terms of reducing the scope and minimising paid hours spent on the project to meet that criteria.

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4) Set your timeline

Timelines are usually second to last, if not the last, step of a project. And for good reason! 

Only once you’ve understood the scope of the project, all the ins and outs, and you and the client (and your team if you have one) have come to an agreement, can you set out the when and where of the project. I’m sure we’ve all heard the pros, but timelines help you stay on track and set yourself lots of little milestones, which make it easier to stave off procrastination. 

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