Parkinson’s law, ‘work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,’ is particularly working for me during these weeks of lockdown.
Yesterday was a good example. It was my day off work, so I didn’t even need to pretend to be working from home. And as my university’s spring term was already finished, I didn’t need to pretend to be attending any virtual classes either, scoffing down my lunch while my webcam was temporarily suffering from technical glitches for mysterious reasons.
I started the day with three key tasks to finish.
- Body maintenance (i.e. exercise and wash my hair)
- Write a 600-word post
- Tweet
With only three main things to do, I reckoned that I would have plenty of time left for studying and reading in the evening. I could see myself finishing these tasks in quite a relaxed manner with my eyes shining bright with efficiency. That was around 9:30 in the morning.
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, I found myself rushing around like a demented squirrel who couldn’t remember where she hid her nuts. I just got out of the shower and my hair was still dripping wet. A look in the mirror reflected a somewhat bewildered girl with a tired, stressed look on her face.
A total of 4 hours wasn’t enough to finish just one task! I then realized that I’d added a few extra steps to my body maintenance session.
Before doing my workout in the morning, I decided that I was too hungry. How could I possibly perform when I was weak from hunger? Especially when the exercise I was about to do involved at least 15 minutes of non-stop leaping around like a cat who accidentally lapped three consecutive cups of coffee. I successfully convinced myself that I needed some food first. After dithering for about 10 minutes deciding what to eat, I chose a slice of toast with a milky cup of coffee. I then had to give my body an hour to partly digest the small amount of food before I did the workout.
While I was waiting, I got stuck doing some kitchen chores and washing a pile of dishes. So, it was more than an hour later when I started manically dancing in the front room in the bright sunshine.
I followed an exercise video where two girls were very energetically and gracefully dancing in an immaculate studio with flashing epilepsy-inducing lights. I was able to do the energetic bit. I would have imagined myself doing the graceful bit too. But annoyingly, there was a big mirror in the room which kept showing me a contradicting image as I jumped around, my hair frizzing up in a halo, my legs wildly swinging across in all directions and the floor underneath me emitting loud heavy thuds.
After the workout, I got an idea that I would have time to pamper myself a little bit and put on a skincare mask on my face. So, instead of getting straight into the shower like I usually did, I set about preparing a skincare mask. It would make me look like a creature who had just escaped from some sci-fi filming set for a few minutes, but I could put up with that if I were rewarded with a better-looking skin.
Except that I couldn’t find the masks in the drawer I thought I kept them in. So, I looked in another possible place, and another, and another, becoming angrier and angrier every minute, and muttering to myself loudly. Even though there was a little voice telling me to just get on with the shower, I was not one for giving up. I kept searching for these vanishing skin masks, just to make absolutely sure that they had, in fact, vanished. After about half an hour, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t actually bring them in and put them in the drawer. Still I didn’t give up. I decided to make my own mask using thin cotton sheets, which unsurprisingly added yet another few minutes to my body maintenance session.
My eventual shower took nearly an hour because I was washing my hair twice to make sure it was completely free of dirt and grime. I washed my face and body twice too.
I got out of the shower only when my hair and body started to squeak with utter cleanliness. Satisfied, I put on the cotton sheets to soothe my twice-cleaned face. I was just admiring my sci-fi creature look in the mirror when I noticed it was nearly 2 o’clock! As usual, I would be rushing around trying to finish the remaining tasks. Again, not much time left to read and study in the evening.
Damn!