There’s a law that I came across this summer that when I read Tim Ferris Book The 4-hour work week (great book) that has fundamentally changed my approach to getting things done. It’s called Parkinson’s law and states: “Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important.”, but it’s its subtext that holds the real learning;
Once I had read that sentence I saw my entire life flash back in an instance, quickly realising how this seemed to be accurate for everything I ever done. I’m just not finished until l really, really, have to be. When I studied to become an engineer, I thought I was clever to start early – so I could finish early. But I never finished. I kept refining and grinding till the very last minute. Spending all my time, time that perhaps could be used more wisely. And this is especially true for creative work. It can always be a little bit better; some words that can be tweaked, some sound effects that could be added, some colours to make it pop.
Source: http://www.outswimmingthesharks.com/lack-of-time-equals-lack-of-priorities/
But knowledge is power, and with power we can change! In other words, you can fix this by actually starting to work with tight deadlines. Specify what it is that you have to do within the limited time you give yourself. Warning – make sure you mean it. Something I failed on with my blogg-every-day-in-January-challenge (so much for that learning). I fail to set a strict deadline for myself, or I told myself I could have 40 minutes every day. But I just stopped caring about it, resulting in all my evening free time going to writing this damn thing. Leaving me with no movie editing time. Which sucks.
And that’s why I’m going to end this blog post right now. Because I just got home from shooting a kick-off event at my company, 7 girls trying to make an impact – Engineers for equality. So now I’m going to edit the shit out of that!
Have a lovely evening?
/Alexander
VIDEO TIPS:
Here’s another video I did for the company I work for a while back, if you’re curious on how it can turn out: https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=eSzb8AKPnfk
A great TED-talk that also highlights the importance of deadlines. This is a funny one and well worth your time!
