Premack and Parkinson

In this week's readings in Roberts and Hyatt, I was impressed by the descriptions of Parkinson's Law and the Premack principle in the section about time-wasters. Roberts and Hyatt describe Parkinson's Law as "work expands to fill the time available for its completion" (p. 10).

This resonated with me based on some of the foundations of my work experience. In the Army, we executed missions with strict timelines. We had to be at certain objectives by certain times or other soldiers and their missions might suffer. As a proposal writer, my first job after the military, we had even stricter deadlines. If a proposal wasn't post-marked on time, or in the hands of the client on the date they set, then the proposal wasn't even considered. In college, I learned that deadlines could be adjusted, changed, or were flexible based on outside reasons. In proposal writing, I had to re-learn everything I thought I knew. Proposals have to be done on time every time. I learned to love deadlines. I also learned Parkinson's Law, our proposals were only as good as the time allotted and we shifted and moved priorities to make as much time as possible.

The Premack principle, or as Roberts and Hyatt state, "Grandma's rule, states that a high-frequency activity can be used to reinforce low-frequency behavior" (p. 10). I look at this as all other jobs that can be put off must be put off until assignments are done. The structure of the program that we are in helps me with this. Knowing that there are breaks between classes where I can have more free-time, using what I've discovered in class toward my work also helps.

The primary barriers I have for these classes and my work toward my dissertation are the same as many in these classes, work, and home life. It is easy to manage work in that as I said above so much of what I learn in my classes and so much of what I write is directly relatable to my work and business. Much of what I do is a net positive for my work.  In terms of home life, although I have two sons who need their father around, I sacrificed for our family in the past few years when she worked towards her MBA. Now, she feels compelled to help me through the Ph.D. process to the same degree that I helped her earn her MBA. The final barrier is my lack of academic understanding and comfortability. I haven't been involved in an academic class of this caliber for over fifteen years and part of the issue is finding my way back into that world. No ready-made solutions for this one, this is where hard work comes into play.

A final barrier I think I should bring up is organization. I use OneNote for much of my work. I log all of the papers I papers, the links, the downloads, etc. I make note sin OneNote so I can search for key words. I think already I've learned that OneNote may be a good tool, but I need to add an Annotated Bibliography for my reading that is far more detailed and worthwhile than that which I've already started.

References:

Roberts, C., & Hyatt, L. (2018). The dissertation journey (3rd ed.). Corwin Press.