“Work expands to fill the time allotted to it.”
~ C. Northcote Parkinson
If you doubt the validity of that rule think about this: what would happen if you went to the office tomorrow without a single goal – not one appointment or objective – for the entire day? Would your day be full or empty? I suspect the day would fill itself. Soon after arriving the phone will ring and someone in your company will want your attention. This will be followed by an employee or colleague stopping by to discuss a problem. Then perhaps a client email will arrive that sends you down 100 rabbit trails in search of a solution. At the end of the day you will leave the office having spent all your hours busily engaged in activities – none of which will have moved you closer to achieving your overall goals.
What if you started your day instead by inserting the most important things in your calendar. Everything else would then have to either fit around your scheduled work or fall by the wayside. Watch this FranklinCovey video for a graphic description of protecting your time by filling your calendar first with “big rocks”.
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