Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Character Development | Parkinson's Law: Work Expands to Fill The Time Needed To Finish | Dealing w/ a Jealous Ex | Home Schooling

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Parkinson's Law: Work Expands to fill the time available for completion.Taking over a leadership role to fix a failing team.Tips to prioritize and execute.Tips for Character Development.Your circle of friends.Mistakes with bringing a "military mind set" to civilian teams.Dealing with a jealous ex.Home Schooling.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Janko Underground podcast number 58. Sitting here with Echo Charles. Echo Charles, how long does it take to plan a seal mission? 30 minutes, more, less, more, more, right? More than you have. So this is a common question that I used to ask the seals. It'd be like, how long will it take you to plan this mission? And guys, guys say, well, you know, four hours or six hours, or eight hours or one hour.

And the answer actually is. This is actually what the answer is. It's a half an hour longer than the amount of time that you had to plan the mission. Because that's what it takes to get everything aligned. You're almost there. Then you've got to make some last minute adjustments. Now, I recently discovered there's a theory, a law around this. And it's actually called Parkinson's Law.

And Parkinson's Law, what it states is that work expands so as to, fill the time available for its completion. Now, in a planning for like a seal mission, there's always a little bit extra to do. That's why it expands beyond it by about a half an hour. You give somebody 20 minutes to plan, it's going to take them 50. You give them an hour.

It's going to take an hour 30. So this guy, his name was Cyril Northcote, Parkinson. He was alive, born in 1909, lived in 1993. He was a naval historian. He was an author. and he served in the territorial army, which is like the reserves over in England. And he actually ended up teaching quite a bit at school,

at military schools. But he made up this law. And the law was kind of, and I read through it, it's a spoof. He's kind of making fun of it. He's making fun of it, right? It's sort of like my statement of like,

it takes a half an hour. Like the theory is that it takes one half hour longer than he, that's what he's doing too. and he put a bunch of formulations around it. And he made other ones, but you know, the number of new employees hired annually over the number of employees who want to be promoted by hiring new employees. He goes through all these formulations. They're funny. And that was for one of his other laws.

But he just talks about how bureaucracies form and how they grow and what their effectiveness and efficiency is. But this particular law is interesting. And it's interesting to pay attention. to because it allows you to take some control over time, right? And knowing that if you can compress time, you can get more done. Do you let like let's say I have a call with an East Coast client that's at seven o'clock in the morning. It takes me a half an hour, you know, to get done, get showered. My workout, I'm going to be super efficient.

And it's going to be a good freaking workout. And I'm going to get, I'm not going to waste any time. I'm in there. I'm getting it. Yeah. If I have my first calls at nine, bro, my workout's going to take longer. And it's not going to be necessarily. Look, sometimes it's nice.

You go in there, you get a little bit of a better workout because you have more time. But when you're on a timeline, you get more efficient. This also applies to if you're going on a hike or you're going on a mission and you have whatever size rucksack you have, it's going to get filled up. So the bigger rucksack you have, the more crap you're going to bring. The more, here's another one, your house. The bigger your house is, remember when you had an apartment? Yep, I do. Back in the day.

Back in the day, yeah. And you didn't have a bunch of stuff. Nope. You had, like, very limited stuff. Yep. Now you got a big house and you got a lot of stuff. With the garage too. With the garage that I've been in, which is kind of filled up with stuff.

It's real. As well. Do your cars fit in your garage anymore? They do now. We recently, very recently just made the decision to go hard and clear it out. Yeah. So these, if you put limitations on yourself, it can actually increase your efficiency. If you set yourself up with a tight schedule, it can drive your tempo.

It can drive your pace. If you give yourself unlimited time, if you give yourself unlimited resources, you're going to use all those resources. you're going to use all that time. Constraints that you put on yourself are very effective. You know, we're Nick Lavery, who's a special forces guy. He's on the podcast. He lost his leg in Afghanistan, and he's got one of his legs as a prosthetic leg. But one of the things he talks about is that when he puts his leg, when he says, look,

when you have a prosthetic leg, when you put that leg on, the timer starts because there's sweat going to build up. The skin's starting to get worn. The, you're basically your body changes a little bit over time. You know, you got to tighten that thing up. You either get swelling or you get reduction.

And so all these things are going on. So when you put, when he puts his leg on, he has, you know, depending on the weather, depending on the temperature, depending on the activity.

He knows when he puts that leg on, he has got to take advantage of that much. Mobility and that is something all these things that I'm talking about the reason I'm talking about them is because they can really help us if we understand Parkinson's law and we understand the hazards of Parkinson's law then we can put things into effect that will help us Avoid falling into that trap. Yeah Makes sense. Yeah, but one of the the things right is like like, that's pretty specific.

It's like, I don't know, maybe, okay, you ever did this or maybe your wife did this or maybe you know someone who did this where, that you live with where it's like, okay, let's say your house is kind of messy. Let's say it's normal messy, but someone's coming over. And they're like, oh, shit, I'm going to be there in 15 minutes. And you start, oh, I don't want them to see my mess, right? And you start cleaning up. Bro, that's like a solid, quick, clean job, you know?

It's kind of the same thing. It'd be not bad. Yeah, it'll probably be, I mean, in my experience, it's usually pretty solid. Yeah. Yeah. Because you got to, but it's, yeah, it's kind of the same thing. It's like, oh, the clock is running. You're not, you're not dilly dallying.

You're not like going through drawers and be like, oh, I remember this thing. Do I need it? Do I not? You're just making decisions. Yeah. One of the little quotes I saw around this thing is, if you wait to the last minute, it only takes a minute. Exactly.

No, I don't appreciate that. Now, one thing that I mess up, I, where I have a problem. is I think I don't want to be late for anything and therefore let's say I'm coming to record the podcast and I'm like okay I'm meeting echo at 430 at night okay 430 and I get done with a call at 4 and I'm like you know what I need gas and I can get I can get I can drive here stop or drive to the gas station stop get gas and then continue here and then be here before 30 but there's like a 1% chance that I'm here at 433

and so I don't do it So I could have It cost me three minutes of being late But now when I drive home I waste 12 minutes Go into the gas station Getting the gas filled and all that stuff So I tend on the

I need to do a better job of just fitting stuff in there Just get it done Just hey look I'll be a little bit late but no factor Deal with it Like you were late today for instance I could have gased I could have gone to the grocery store or whatever.

You know what I'm saying? Yep, you could have. You're on Hawaiian time for us. Yes, sir. Yeah. Well, well, yeah. But that's, okay, and then there's this factor too, where it's kind of along those lines as well where, okay, I'm assuming you never did this because of your college experience that I know about.

You weren't like this, but I was like this where, let's say they're like, okay, we've got this paper due. And it's going to in two weeks, you know, this paper's due, and it's about this. And brought to me two weeks. I don't have to start till next week. You know, like, bro, I could do it in one week. And then one week turns into like four days now you have left, you know, to turn in four days and three days. And then I have one day to do it.

And I didn't even start. Like, I think that's a common thing for a lot of us college students. It's definitely a common thing. And it is almost embarrassing for me. I would literally be like done with stuff a week in advance. Like it was so stupid. Yeah. And that makes sense.

And there's a whole other thing. But by the way, I'm not trying to like humble brag. I was a 28 year old man at this point. This was my job. This wasn't, I wasn't going to party. I wasn't meeting a girl after class or before class. I wasn't. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast.

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