Work expands to fill the time available for completion.
I hate meetings at work. And you do, too. I know you do.
Long ago, bleary-eyed in the middle of the night, I learned a couple of valuable lessons about meetings. The first is we have way too many. Therefore, the first step in taking back ownership of your time is to decline useless meetings. But the second was just as important — meetings will last as long as the calendar says they will.
If you invite people to a one-hour meeting, someone, or sometimes several someones, will yammer on for 60 minutes until the bell dings. Then, the herd will just move on to the next meeting, where someone else will yammer on for the full 60 minutes.
It’s stupid. It’s a productivity killer (personally and organizationally). It sucks your energy and willingness to live.
But it’s also not really someone’s fault. It’s just a trait of human beings. It’s kinda just in us. Hence, the naming of the phenomena.
So how do you combat it? By also applying a little human psychology of your own.
- Change your default meeting time to 15 minutes. Only selectively and intentionally schedule a discussion for longer than 15 minutes.
- Why have a meeting if you can work it out with a few exchanges on Slack? Do it.
- Announce that you have hard stop at 15/30/60 minutes. Then leave/drop at that time.
You can do this. Break the grip of Parkinson’s Law.
