How To Stop Overcomplicating Work And Letting It Take Over Your Life

We have all been there whether it’s school or work. You get a piece of work or a project with a deadline. instead of properly managing your time on the project and doing the work bit by bit as intended you procrastinated until that deadline was right on your doorstep. When you finally got around to it, the deadline was right around the corner leaving you panicked and stressed, frantically trying to get it finished. If you’re anything like me this story can seem a little too familiar, but what you may have noticed is that against all odds, you can still somehow finish all the work in the small fraction of time that you had available.

Complicated Work – Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law was first observed by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as the fact that public administration, bureaucracy, and officialdom expand to fill their allotted time slot, regardless of how much work there was to be done. this then turned into the saying:

Work complicates to fill its allotted time.

The inverse of this is the reason why a whole week’s worth of work can be crammed into 7 or 8 hours. Our deadlines can either create more work for us or conversely, they can eliminate it.

I have already talked about how you can minimise the tendency for busy work through thoughtful prioritization of work by using the Pareto Principle, however, armed with this new knowledge we can leverage another tool to help us get work done faster.

Finish Work On Time – The Artificial Deadline

When we work we can ignore any imposed deadlines and instead set artificial deadlines. This isn’t just limited to projects that already have a deadline, it’s possible to create a deadline for almost any task that you want to get done.

What this false deadline does is it puts us under what’s known as time pressure. Time pressure is something that has been shown to increase performance and productivity in workers1 and it also has some on decision making but it is important that we try to strike a balance when putting ourselves under pressure, if the pressure deviates too far from what is desirable (either too high or too low) performance is actually likely to suffer as a consequence2.

Not only are we adding the benefit of time pressure it is being done in a controlled manner. You have the ability to modulate how much of this ‘time pressure’ you are putting yourself under and if you need to change an artificial deadline later then you are always able to.

The rule for our deadlines is that they must be realistic. If the deadline is too short it can unnecessarily increase stress levels and prolonged stress has been shown to negatively impact the brain3, while also making the quality of our work and decision-making poorer. Make the deadline too long though and it will begin to promote procrastination & busywork, either because there is no urgency to complete the task so you put it off, or alternatively you don’t procrastinate but due to Parkinson’s law, you will end up finding extra work to do for yourself that isn’t necessary.

Anxiety around deadlines is caused by our perception of our ability to meet the deadline on time. If we set a realistic deadline, we can minimise stress while reaping the benefits of increased time pressure. Try to push yourself a little with the artificial deadline but not so much that it begins to cause you excess stress & anxiety.

Time Management With Blocks

One thing I like to do is to block my time so that If I am trying to reach a deadline in a week maybe I will have a 2-hour block each day that I can work towards my deadline in. When I block out my time in this manner it not only helps me focus and engage in deep work because I know that this time is solely dedicated to a specific task, but I will also avoid spending all day stressing about the deadline because I know I have the time set aside for working towards it. Because I have planned ahead of time when to do the work I don’t have to think about it at any other time, admittedly this is something I am still trying to get better at.

Burn Out Prevention – Mini Vacations

David Goggins spoke about the concept of a mental aid station or a mini vacation and I really like this idea. When he’s not going crazy and working his ass off, he is completely switched off, he said that while he is eating or showering for example he is in a mental aid station quoted on the Joe Rogan podcast saying.

I dont think about sh*t, I dont f**king think think about people, I don’t think about work, I dont think about running, I dont think about working out.

I find this to be something that everyone could incorporate, we all need time to relax so that we don’t burn out. Without having a plan in place for how we spend time, it’s easy to get lost worrying about what we should or could be doing with it. If we have our work organised into blocks and we are smart with our artificial deadlines, this can free us from that constant feeling that we are not spending our time optimally and give us the much-needed time to kick back and relax.

Having a better sense of time management by using work blocks can allow us to be more productive in other areas too. When I say productivity I don’t just mean work, school, and your side hustle or whatever, productivity can extend beyond the realm of what we call ‘work’ as long as you are making the best use of your time then you can consider it productive or if you are investing your time now into something that will pay off in the future then that’s also considered a productive. Spending more time with your partner or kids can be productive, spending time catching up with your friends is productive, and even taking time to relax and do nothing is productive.

We can often find ourselves in this mindset that we need to be working all the time and that it’s all about the grind & hustle but why would we be working 10 hours a day if we can spend 2 hours doing it and get the same results or even 90% of the results, we need to be thinking about time. Time is the ultimate resource and it’s something that you can never get back, so our goal is to have of much of it for ourselves as possible. This ties into what I was talking about in the previous post about knowing when to stop. Having a good separation between work and the rest of your life will lead to a more stress-free mind.

Key Takeaway

Be mindful of Parkinson’s Law and use it to set realistic artificial deadlines so that you can take advantage of time pressure and minimise the over-complication of work, also set distinct time blocks for working so that you are stopping your work from taking over the rest of your life.

Footnotes & Sources

  1. Andrews, F.M. and Farris, G.F. (1972) ‘Time pressure and performance of scientists and engineers: A five-year panel study’, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 8(2), pp. 185–200. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(72)90045-1.
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  2. ibid ↩︎
  3. McEwen, B.S. and Sapolsky, R.M. (1995) ‘Stress and cognitive function’, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 5(2), pp. 205–216. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/0959-4388(95)80028-X.
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