How much can we do in a day? Part 1

Now that I am back at uni, I have to balance my time between lectures, studying, applying for jobs, setting up my own business, working out, going out, and many other things. This has led me to a question of how much can I actually do in one day. I am sure you have asked yourself that question many times before as well. I have recently read a book by C. Northcote Parkinson, The Parkinson’s Law, which might offer us an answer.

One of the most famous Parkinson’s laws postulates that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. I think this is very true. Just imagine you are sitting in your room and have to for example write a short report for a class/your boss and you have three hours to do so. You would probably spend the first half an hour on facebook, the next half an hour deciding what to write about, ten minutes checking your email, hour and half writing the report with some more facebook in between and use the remaining time for formatting it and watching videos on youtube.

Now suppose you have only an hour to write the report because you are also planning to go to a gym for an hour and to catch up with a friend over a coffee afterwards to discuss your new business idea. I bet you would finish the report to a comparable if not better standard in that one hour of focused work and manage to do two more important things in those same three hours.

So what is the moral? Do not be afraid to schedule lot of activities in your day because it will only make you more effective in whatever you are doing. If I am under a pressure of a packed day and tight deadlines, I cut off most of my unproductive time such as facebook, focus on work at hand more intensively and therefore complete it a lot faster and to a higher standard, do many other things and at the end of the day, still end up with more free time than I had before.

The next blog post will be on what you can actually do with all that new free time.