#10 Shorten Your Timelines - You Will Win Faster!
December 9, 2024•311 words
This rule is as good for work as it is for life. If you’re building anything:
… a project
… an app
… a protocol
… a business
- a house
or if you're learning anything; you must remember that work will always fill the time you assign to it.
It’s very old wisdom. It’s called Parkinson’s Law and it works without fail 😉
Shortening timelines is the easiest team and your personal hack how to accomplish more faster. Our mind is not the best at estimating the length of activities, especially when it comes to mental creations.
How long does it take to give someone the right answer? How long does it take to write down a report about data you haven't seen yet? How long to program a dashboard? How long to materialize your idea in code?
All these can have answers ranging between an hour or day to weeks and months. Our brains are affected by whole range of biases so it's pretty normal to get one estimate in the morning and a different one towards the end of the day. Depending on how tired your mind is, what happened before you got the question or what was the result of your past project estimate. That's normal but not very helpful.
Hence very common advice from successful people is to shorten timelines, shorten estimates. The worst that can happen will be you will need more time.
I know I'm guilty of this often. I set soft timelines. And on the other extreme - sometimes I set impossible timelines just because I'm excited and want to make something happen.
I write this mainly to remember that internal timelines in 2025 should always be shorter.
What about you - what's your experience with Parkinson's Law?
Let me know on Farcaster! Or find me on Twitter/X or LinkedIn!
Till tomorrow! 🤠