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Letting Go: Work and Parkinson’s Law

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lettingGo_WORK Letting go of work?!  Where do I sign up?

Before you get too excited, I am not suggesting you give up working or that work is bad.

I am suggesting that we tend to let work take over our lives in unhealthy and unproductive ways.

 

Let me start with Parkinson’s Law (click here for a helpful article).

Parkinson’s Law – Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

 

Did you catch that? It’s our fault that we work too much. We assign more time for tasks than is necessary to accomplish them, and often create more stress and worry by allowing ourselves more time to think about something we should have already been able to complete.

 Imagine you are at work, and the boss gives you an assignment Tuesday morning with a due date of Friday morning:

Your brain subconsciously does the math (T-W-T-F = 4 days), counting Friday as a whole day even though the assignment is due that morning, and you automatically assign the project a 4-day time value for completion.

Only, the assignment could probably be completed in the next hour before you go to lunch.

For the next 2 1/2 days you use this looming assignment deadline as an excuse to miss meetings, stay late at the office, and generally give the appearance of being exceedingly busy on a BIG assignment.

Truth is, Thursday 4pm rolls around and you haven’t even started the project yet, and now you reallize that you don’t have a fourth day to complete it, and you have to get it done tonight!

You panic a bit, go for a coffee, and proceed to make the assignment as big as you indicated to everyone all week long, staying until 9pm to get it done.

The fact that most of us work in an environment that expects us to show up by 9am for 8 or 9 hours, 5 or 6 days a week, leaves us with the unpleasant task of figuring out how to fill the time so that we appear to be busy.

For this reason I suggest that the proverbial 40-hour workweek (for many it is more like 50-60 or higher) is doing many of us, and our employers, a great disservice by wasting valuable time and resources. The following practices might increase overall productivity as well as improve work/life balance:

Employees

  • Challenge yourself with shorter deadlines for each new task
  • Reward yourself by using some of the time saved to work on some of your own initiatives (which could lead to promotion, etc.)
  • Set a goal to leave the office by __pm everyday, communicate this with your boss, then show them how much more productive you are

Employers

  • Establish clear rewards for completing assignments early, like leaving an hour early, or inclusion on a cool new project team
  • Give deadlines for assignments that clearly indicate the time it should take to complete
  • Help your employees by prioritizing assignments when multiple assignments overlap

 

Referenced Link:  How to use Parkinson’s Law to Your Advantage, www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/how-to-use-parkinsons-law-to-your-advantage.html

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SingleLife: One Worth Living

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singleLife-OneWorthLiving-20Many people struggle with the idea of being single – running constantly into a barrage of inane commentary and advice such as:

        • it’s just a phase you’re going through
        • you just haven’t found the right one yet
        • God has someone for you, just be patient
        • you must not be trying hard enough
        • you’re just too picky

All of the above is crap – for the most part.  The state of being single is not purgatory, it’s not simply a way-station of suffering you must endure as an incomplete person before finally finding that someone who will make you whole (think Jerry McGuire’s defining moment when he says, “You complete me”).

You are a Whole Person

You are a whole person just as you are.  Yes, God said it was not good for Adam (man) to be alone, and created Eve and established marriage as two joining together and becoming one.  Two become one.  1+1=1.  Not 1/2 + 1/2 = 1.  It was two single whole individuals joining together to become a new combined whole.

If we continue with the math analogy, two wholes must give up something in order to become a new whole.  As we all know in math, 1+1=2, so in order for 1+1 to equal 1, something must be subtracted from each.  I’ll simply state this as what we all accept as putting the other’s needs before our own, such as:

  • finances are no longer separate but combined
  • decisions on how to spend your time are no longer autonomous
  • you may have to do things you don’t like, simply because your spouse needs you to do them

So, in mathematical terms, married people are theoretically less whole than single people.

One Worth Living

There is so much we can do and achieve as single people that we cannot do within a marriage relationship.  I just watched the Ashton Kutcher film Jobs (about Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers) the other night, and was struck by the harshness with which Jobs rejects his girlfriend when she tells him she is pregnant early on in the growth of Apple Computers (he basically throws her out of the house).  While not condoning his actions or the choice he made, I believe he understood fundamentally that Apple Computers would never be what he envisioned it could be if he had to attend to the matters of being married.

In 1 Corinthians 7:32-35, the apostle Paul describes the difference between the focus of the unmarried versus married.  Take a look (I have take the liberty to divide the passage into bullets for easier dissemination):

  • I want you to be free from anxieties.
  • The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.
  • But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided.
  • And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.
  • But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.
  • I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

 

Paul is not against marriage, but is concerned about things that create worldly anxiety in us and wants us to be free of them.    A married man must concern himself with how to please his wife, and thus his interests are forever divided between what pleases his wife and what pleases God, himself, his company, etc.  The same goes for the married woman.

The key here, is that Paul wishes us to remain single as he is (1 Corinthians 7:7) in order that we can secure our undivided devotion to the Lord.  Thus, choosing to live the SingleLife is a high calling, not a punishment!

The SingleLife is One Worth Living simply because it allows us the best opportunity to secure our undivided devotion to God.  So focus less on why you are single and more on devoting your life to God.  I guarantee it will be worth it.