Our life is full of uncertainties. One simply can’t predict what’s going to happen in the next moment. We at Transformationplus believe that to build the “Project Myself” we have to learn to handle uncertainties. Accepting the very nature of life is the only way to deal with it. Through this blog, we bring to you some laws and principles which have stood the test of time and have been influential in the success of all those individuals who have implemented them.
PARKINSON’S LAW
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
If a person got a deadline to complete a work, he will definitely complete but what if he does not get any deadline that work will take more time than expected, and maybe that work will never end. When you have a deadline it’s like a storm ahead of you or having a truck around the corner. It’s approaching’ so you focus heavily on the task.
Forcing your work towards a deadline will result in student syndrome. “The student syndrome applies when humans start tasks as late as possible and waste safety margins thus increasing time pressure and stress levels.” And this will affect the time of task delivery
The basic theory postulates that the volume of work and the number of employees do not necessarily correlate with one another. People assume that if the volume of work increases then you should also increase the no of employees which is not justified. Suppose you distributed work to several employees which can be done by a single employee in a shorter time but by distributing the same work to several people it will take more time for completion because they take some time in coordinating with each other and then assigning work to each other and let an employee completed his work on time but may not be liked by other employees who are on the same job and this will lead to the never-ending road.
PARETO’S PRINCIPLE
The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of the cause. Sometimes it is also called by different names such as The 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few.
80% tax is paid by approx. 20% of taxpayers. In sports also the majority of wins are often by two or three key players. Also, most disasters are caused by only a few hazards that can do mass destruction.
This phenomenon is most common in business and economics and time management because it is used to maximize the output by giving fewer efforts and it also helps to find out where one should focus to maximize output. It can be used to prioritize the task, you can choose from your task which one you should perform first, and after performing that task, you should analyze which has the highest impact. For example, a student should try to solve that subject which has an overall greater impact and which can maximize his knowledge and marks by giving less time.
And the 20% of customers of a company is responsible for 80% of consumption, this will help the company to maximize the output and also help them to optimize for that 20% of people.
But one should not always depend on this principle because it is not necessary that this principle always works on anything
DUNNING- KRUGER EFFECT
The Dunning-Kruger is the cognitive bias whereby people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability or it can have the opposite effect on high performers by their tendency to underestimate their skills. The Dunning-Kruger effect is usually measured by comparing self-assessment with objective performance. For example, a sportsman not performing well in his/or her sports but he or she is overestimating his or her performance and ability instead of analyzing his poor performance and working toward improving his performance for the next game.
It can also lead to bad decision-making and choosing the wrong career in which they can not perform as well as required because they are overestimating themselves and their ability and are unaware of their skills.
In the studies reported in their paper “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” (1999), Dunning and Kruger tested the abilities of four groups of young adults in three domains: humor, logic (reasoning), and grammar. The results supported their predictions that, as compared with their more competent peers, “incompetent individuals…will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to objective criteria”; that they “will be less able…to recognize competence when they see it” (whether their own or someone else’s); that they “will be less able…to gain insight into their true level of performance” by comparing their own performance with that of others; and, paradoxically, that they can improve their ability to recognize their own incompetence by becoming more competent, “thus providing them[selves] the metacognitive skills necessary to be able to realize that they have performed poorly.”
So we should avoid the Dunning-Kruger effect because it will ultimately result in overestimating or underestimating our ability so this can affect the progress of a person in a different field and also demotivate that person from doing something new.
LABORIT’S LAW
Laborit’s Law also called the Law of Least Effort or Principle of least Effort suggests that humans prefer to carry out simple tasks that give immediate satisfaction to avoid stress or inconvenience.
But why do we tend to do easy tasks? Because doing easy tasks first will tick more boxes on the to-do list, and it gives the satisfaction of doing a large no of work and something productive, but actually, that is not productive because doing more easy tasks does not make anyone productive, and also it does not add value, rather if we do the hard task it will add value and also increase productivity.
“The only difference between the success and failure is the ability to take action”-Alexander Graham Bell
Doing an easy task first makes the person happy but it does not add value to the work and one can not achieve anything big. It only put us in our comfort zone as much as possible and for achieving something big one should come out of their comfort zone.
So how we can avoid the consequences of Laborit’s law? We should focus on the importance and value addition of the task rather than its easiness and toughness.
CONSTANTINE’S LAW
“A fool with the tool is still a fool”
Rather than saying fool, we should say a dangerous fool. The problem with providing a tool to an unskilled or a fool who does not know what should be done with that tool is he will do anything with that which may be not the function of that tool for example if we give a hammer to a person for him everything will become a nail. If we do not provide proper training for a specific tool it will be more dangerous.
Tools have a wonderful way of amplifying our capabilities but when this tool reaches the hands of fools tools not enable us to poor execution but also a very high rate.
So before giving tools to anyone first they must be taught and trained to use the particular tool.