If It Weren't For The Last Minute, Nothing Would Get Done
Artificial Intelligence, Microsoft's Work Report, and Parkinson's Law
“If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.”
In the 1950’s, an article published in The Economist proposed an idea called Parkinson’s Law; the concept that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This means that if you have lots of time to finish something, you still tend to take the full duration. If you give an unforgiving deadline to a subordinate, you’ll be amazed at how much they can do on short notice. These adages came to mind when I was reviewing this week’s Microsoft report on work trends and office habits:
Every 2 Minutes
The frequency at which an employee is interrupted (and, therefore distracted) during core work hours by meetings, emails, or notifications.
60%
The percentage of meetings that take place completely impromptu rather than scheduled ahead of time.
122%
The number of spikes in PowerPoint edits that take place in the final 10 minutes before a meeting.
117
The number of emails that hit the average work inbox everyday (and most are “read” in under 60 seconds.)
50+
The quantity of messages that arrive outside business hours.
29%
The percentage of workers that are back on their work email by 10 PM
20%
The percentage of employees who check messages before noon on weekends.
16%
The percentage that meetings after 8 pm are increasing year over year.
The report also asserts that:
“AI offers a way out of the mire, especially if paired with a reimagined rhythm of work.”
Now that’s a goal that I can get behind. Yet, important questions need to be asked:
What is inviting this constant creep of professional life into civilian territory?
Why, despite the sophisticated knowledge tools and labor-saving devices that have been invented in the last decades, are people still working more hours than ever?
If Parkinson’s Law has any merit, what does that say about how we are allotting our time?
I wouldn’t expect Microsoft to ask these questions, but it’s strange that its customers aren’t. Deploying agentic AI is not the same thing as giving back meaningful time to human employees; it is merely freeing up human employees to do other tasks. Why? Because work always expands to fill the time allotted to it. This means changing our expectations of work, rate of consumption, and reasserting our right to useful unemployment before we do the “reimagining” of new rhythms. Remember, tech is merely an extension of man — it won’t help us unless we are first willing to help ourselves.
Spot on insights! my last organization had a 7 hour internet outage during office hours and I had the privilege of asking some of the more “seasoned” professionals how in the world did people work in offices before the internet and one joked “we didn’t”
After the quick laugh the team member shared a very similar sentiment to that of your post:
“We made it easier to meet, now our monthly meetings have become weekly. We made it easier to communicate now our correspondence is expected within minutes.” (rough paraphrase)
As we steadily barrel into the inevitable “next shift of optimization” that we hear developers prophesy on San Josean stages just about every other week, I’ll be sure to be intentional at spotting what feels the newfound void.