If you are anything like me, you are bombarded by posts about self-help and productivity gurus who each have their own list of things to help you be better. Achieve more. Be more productive. Ensure that all of your needs and desires are met and achieved while still having time for an extensive morning routine with a cold plunge and a 30-minute meditation.

While I truly believe that posts like this can be beneficial, I sometimes wonder if we are making things too complicated:

• • Do I really need that extensive morning routine?
  • Would my life be noticeably better if I had a better system?
  • How much optimization is too much optimization?

Come to think of it… there really are just three principles I swear by:

• • Murphy’s Law
  • Parkinson’s Law

• • Pareto Principle

That said, of course there are more principles that I find useful. But on a daily basis… when it comes to making sure I have my ducks in a row, I find myself routinely coming back to these three.

Let’s explore each principle and how I apply them on a daily basis to ensure I actually get things done.

Murphy’s Law

Put simply, Murphy’s law states that everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And oh boy does it! Even more so, things usually go wrong in the most inconvenient way possible… at least at the moment they go wrong.

Let me give you an example. I was recently placed in clinical rotation at a fairly prestigious institution here in Iceland. To provide some background, I did not get my first choice but I did get my second choice for a clinical placement so I really cannot complain. Nevertheless, this bugged me. I wanted my first pick but alas, I did not get it.

But fair enough, that’s not that bad… I am privileged to be in the position I am in and, again, the placement isn’t really that bad. It’s a pretty good clinical placement. However, one of the prerequisites for doing this clinical placement is to get my childhood vaccinations up to date. This is standard procedure and I should have had this sorted two years ago… but the thing is, I don’t really like needles and thus had been putting it off. I go my COVID vaccines but these damned booster shots had been a thorn in my side that I was going to deal with later. Well, later is now and I am getting these booster vaccinations sorted on Monday.

What’s the point of this story you might ask?

Let’s recap. If everything that can go wrong will go wrong, then it makes sense that I didn’t get my first pick for the clinical placement. And since it went wrong, the inconvenience of the vaccination feels like adding grey to black. But I should have known better and planned ahead (spoiler: I did so, partly).

For reasons irrelevant to this post, I was kind of expecting to get my second pick for the clinical placement. And it actually works out better for me overall. I will get fewer hours but be a bit more flexible; a huge plus given my concomitant PhD studies. I will also get a chance to work at this prestigious place (I’ll detail that experience later!) and I don’t think I’ll get another chance to do so given my five-year plan regarding clinical practice.

How can we leverage Murphy’s Law

Since everything that can go wrong, will go wrong… just expect it. There is no magic solution. That’s not to say that I am advocating for some extreme pessimism. Quite the contrary! Expect that things will go wrong in some way and expect it. If you expect it you gain (at least) two things:

1. 1. It does not shake your emotional well-being up as much.
   2. You can actually make contingency plans!

While the first point is fairly self-evident, the second one is where the true magic happens. Not a Pollyanna magic solution, but a tangible way to leverage Murphy’s law.

Let’s say that you are going to a meeting that is important. You are probably better off heading out 10 minutes before you think you do just in case there is no parking. Or you are going to work (or school) and you use your phone a lot. You’re probably better off having a phone charger in your bag than having no battery.

Caveat to Murphy’s Law

Now a huge caveat to this is in order!

Making plans and thinking through potential solutions to future hurdles can become a safety behavior. I have previously talked about safety behaviors, but in case you missed it, read up on it here. In short, too much preparation can become an avoidance behavior that maintains a sense of anxiousness and then we have unsuccessfully leveraged Murphy’s law.

My way of leveraging this law is as follows: Shit is going to happen. That’s life. I make plans for important things and a contingency plan to fall back on if things go wrong. I am also just mindful of the randomness of life. If something I do works out without any problems, I am fully aware of the fact that luck plays some role in that. At the same time, I put my heart and soul into everything I do and ensure I do my best every time I produce something.

Parkinson’s Law

This is probably my favorite principle because it has such direct and obvious benefits. In short, Parkinson’s law states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. So if you have 5 weeks to complete a task… Parkinson’s law would dictate that the task is going to take 5 weeks. However, if you are given only 5 hours to complete that same task… you will have some version of the finalized task after 5 hours.

This begs the question of whether the quality of the task is different when we give ourselves 5 weeks to complete it versus 5 hours. It is somewhat self-evident that the results are not going to be the same but I would wager that the 5 hour result is better. And I’ll tell you why.

Assuming that we have a “true” deadline of 5 weeks and you set yourself a 5-hour time limit to complete the task, in 5 hours you are going to have some version of a completed task. The rationale behind this being the better result compared to the 5-week version is that when we have an immediate and intimidating deadline, our mindset is different. We are better able to prioritize. We separate the wheat from the chaff and dive head-first into the most important components.

Furthermore, since we have the “true” deadline of 5 weeks to work with, we haven’t compromised on quality… at least not for the end result. We still have 4 weeks and 6 days to work on this task if we need to. We can let the task incubate and tackle any remaining details with another 5-hour session next week.

By setting arbitrary deadlines that seem unachievable, not only do we set ourselves up for success by being in a big picture and prioritization-heavy mindset but we also ensure that we run into the inevitable problems associated with doing the task quicker, which in turn leaves ample time for problem-solving. Additionally, by being in this mindset, we set ourselves up for entering flow; a state where time passes quickly but effortlessly due to immense focus.

How I Have Leveraged Parkinson’s Law

When I was working on my master’s thesis at Stockholm University, I was adamant about proving myself. I wanted to prove to myself that I could be an academic. I wanted to prove to my supervisor that I could tackle difficult tasks. I wanted to prove to my family that I was capable of taking on difficult tasks with ease. Let’s make one thing clear, however… writing a master’s thesis is a difficult task. It proved to be the most time-consuming task I had taken on at that stage in my career and I like many before me struggled quite a bit.

What set my journey apart, however, was that I was aware of Parkinson’s law and how I could leverage it. In short, since work expands to fill the time available for its completion, the most rational way to leverage this is to set arbitrary deadlines. And that is exactly what I did.

I was supposed to start writing my thesis in mid-January and hand it in by the end of May. There were no other classes during that period. It’s just thesis work. To me, almost 5 months of thesis writing seemed excessive and I set myself the deadline to have it done by Match 1st. This left me approximately 6 weeks to complete the thesis, including data analysis, literature review, etc. I even booked a trip from Stockholm to Iceland on March 1st to cement the fact that this thesis better be done by then.

When March 1st arrived, I had completed about 95% of the whole thesis. More importantly, however, I had a completed version that I could present to my supervisor. So when I sat down in the airplane to go on my trip to Iceland, I did so without any guilt. I knew I had been successful in my goal. I had a completed version of my thesis. The reason why I say it was 95% finished is because I tweaked it and let it incubate until I handed it in in May. But that is a pro, not a con. It meant that I could let the ideas I presented in my thesis develop implicitly in my mind while I worked on other tasks, in turn resulting in better-developed arguments in the final product (which ended up being published in the journal Clinical Psychology in Europe.

What’s more is that since I suddenly had way more time available for other tasks, I got the opportunity to work on another paper that also ended up being published in another journal (Frontiers in Psychology).

If we go back to the goals I had, by using Parkinson’s law to my advantage, not only did I prove to myself that I could become a successful academic, but I also proved to my supervisor and family that I could tackle difficult tasks with ease.

The Four-Step Protocol for Leveraging Parkinson’s Law

In summary, you can start leveraging Parkinson’s law like me by following these steps:

1. 1. Pick a difficult task that you need to get done
   2. Evaluate the key components of the task and write down the true deadline for the task
   3. Set an arbitrary deadline that seems absurd to your colleagues
      For example, if you have 5 months to do something, aim to have it done in 5-6 weeks
   4. Timeblock hours in your calendar to work on the task and get to it!

Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle ties in nicely with Parkinson’s law. According to the Pareto principle, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. In other words, a disproportionate relationship exists between what you put into something and what you get out of it. The Pareto principle is also sometimes known as the 80/20 rule.

This is why we can safely leverage Parkinson’s law! Most of the heavy lifting in your success is dictated by 20% of your actions.

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Here is the thing though… the 20% that are causing 80% of your outcomes are usually the fundamentals!

For example, the things that set an elite soccer player apart from an enthusiastic fan is usually not the complexity of their techniques. Instead, elite soccer players are elite because they excel in the fundamentals of soccer. They can pass the ball quickly, effortlessly, and consistently; their cardio is on an elite level because they consistently work to ensure that they can sprint back and forth through the field; they find opportunities to score goals because they have practiced consistently over a long period of time from all the different vantage points.

These things are not unique. Most people can pass a soccer ball around, run across a field, or hit a soccer ball in the general direction of a goal. But you may have picked up on a theme in this example: Consistency!

Elite players consistently practice the fundamentals to ensure they can perform on an elite level on gameday.

But maybe this sports analogy is not your cup of tea. Maybe you are thinking to yourself, “What on earth does this have to do with productive work?”

How I Leverage the Pareto Principle

Similar to Parkinson’s law, the Pareto principle helps us prioritize. If 80% of our results are due to 20% of our actions, then we need to find out what those 20% are! And as I alluded to before, they are usually associated with the foundational components of our work.

Let me illustrate this with two different, but equally valuable examples.

Example 1: Fundamentals of Being Human

To excel in anything, we need a few things to be in order.

Firstly, we must ensure that we sleep enough (i.e., at least 6 hours). Compromising on sleep is like shooting yourself in the foot. If I work late and have an early meeting the day after, I become groggy and my mental clarity is out the window. In other words, the 2 hours I thought I gained by staying up late and working on an important project the night before come at the cost of being (for all intents and purposes) useless the day after. Therefore, never compromise on sleep! If you don’t already have a sleep schedule, make one and stick to it! Furthermore, be aware of the fact that not all sleep is equal. If you sleep from 2 am to 10 pm, the chances of a restful and regenerative sleep are substantially lower than if you sleep from 10 pm to 6 am. I recommend checking out Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep to gain further insights on sleep. Regardless, sleep is a fundamental part of being human and if you compromise on sleep, you will not achieve as much as someone who prioritizes sleep.

Secondly, physical activity is vital for longevity and success. Aim for some combination of high-intensity physical activity such as aerobic exercise and low-intensity physical activity such as yoga and stretching. For example, the combination of aerobic and cardiovascular physical activity has been shown to be preventative for depression. Physical activity is also one of the only things we have robustly been able to find to prevent the deterioration of general mental ability (commonly referred to as IQ). General mental ability generally declines as we age but we can slow down this decline by ensuring that we have an exercise regimen in place.

Thirdly, there is some truth to the notion that we are what we eat. In science, we sometimes refer to sloppy results in academic papers as “junk in, junk out” and the same principle applies to nutrition. If we are malnourished and/or dehydrated, we are not going to be able to perform as well as someone who makes their dietary goals a priority.

There are undoubtedly more things that can be collapsed under the fundamentals of being human with good reason. However, I have noticed in myself and others that these three things often discriminate between the good performers from the great performers. When I get sufficient sleep, am on track with my exercise regimen, and ensure that I am properly nourished and hydrated, my work becomes much easier. I get into a flow state more easily. I get more things done (even though I spend time excursing and meal prepping). I have greater mental clarity and I just feel better.

In summary then, ensure that you have ticked the following boxes:

1. 1. Get at least 6 hours of sleep (preferably closer to 7-8)
   2. Exercise 2-4 times per week
   3. Eat nourishing food and keep track of your hydration throughout the day

Example 2: Fundamentals of Academic Work

Let’s apply the Pareto principle to academic and professional work. For me, knowing that the foundational 20% of my efforts are going to yield the majority of the results makes me approach academic writing differently than I otherwise would. For instance, in academia, there are a handful of rules about how to cite sources. Doing this by hand (i.e., writing out the reference section manually) is both tedious and time-consuming. Therefore, a reference manager like Zotero that automatically keeps track of my sources and cites them in the reference section in the correct style is a foundational timesaving hack.

But let’s take a more practical example. If the foundational skills are what matters most, then practicing them should be a priority. That is one of the reasons I started this blog. I wanted to practice my ability to distill complex topics into bite-sized posts that were useful. By actively blogging, I am fostering my ability to speak about science to people who are not invested in my specific niche of psychology.

Another example of how I look for the foundations is related to the papers I read before starting a literature review. More academic papers could be read than I can count. But not all papers are equal. The foundational works; the foundational papers and books on a given subject; provide me with a clear starting point and inform my subsequent reading of newer papers. For example, I was recently diving into the topic of behavioral activation (a type of therapy that is mainly used for depression), and instead of starting with the newest research, I went out of my way to find the first papers written on the subject and read them deeply. I made an effort to understand the fundamental theory behind behavioral activation before trying to immerse myself in the most up-to-date research. And because I started with the foundational papers, I could more easily separate the main findings and key points from recent research papers from the unimportant parts.

In summary then, what I do to leverage the Pareto principle (usually in conjunction with Parkinson’s law) is to look for the fundamental skills and the foundations of the thing I am doing. There is a reason why fundamentals are fundamental… everything else rests on the assumption that you have mastered them!

My Principle-Driven Protocol: Summary

To leverage all the protocols I have detailed in this post, I have compiled my approach into a 3-point protocol that you can start using today!

1. 1. Assume things are going to go worse than you think and that things are going to take longer than you think (Murphy’s Law). That way you can make contingency plans for both your work and your emotional well-being.
   2. Set yourself an arbitrary deadline for tasks that are important but could be procrastinated (Parkinson’s law). That way, you ensure that you meet the deadline, don’t procrastinate doing the task, and gain a big-picture understanding of the important components of the task.
   3. Find out what the most important components to your success are and practice them extensively (Pareto principle). The thing that often separates the good from the great is a mastery over the fundamentals!