How to Write Better Essays

Finding more time

Organising your time in this deliberate and careful way has one, almost

unexpected, bonus. We’re all inclined to believe that we already organ-

ise our time effectively and that we can’t really get any more out of

ourselves. We seem to work long hours, we make sacrifices to get the

work done, and we never seem to have enough time to relax or to do

those things that we enjoy most. So to ask us to plan more efficiently

seems absurd: it cannot be done.

But once we settle down to write out our plan and force our-

selves to design the best way of working, we are likely to find that there

is more time to do things than we ever expected. It might be that

without a clear, well designed plan in front of us, each time we get

down to work we’re more relaxed about what we have to do and the

pace we need to work at. We have only a vague notion of how long a

task should take, and we don’t have a clear idea of what we’ve got to

do after this, or what we’re expecting to get done before the end of the

day. Consequently, we tend to spend more time on the task than we

need to.

This is one of the better illustrations of Parkinson’s Law. The British

historian, writer and political analyst Cecil Northcote Parkinson

famously argued that, ‘Work expands so as to fill the time available for

its completion.’^1 In setting about our work, if we fail to make clear to

ourselves what we want to achieve in a given time, we’re likely to fall

victims to this. Indeed, like a computer virus, it’s likely to invade every

activity in our pattern of study. And most students who are affected

have no idea that they are.

What’s more, those students who tend to be severely affected

turn out to be the most hardworking and motivated. They will work

prodigious hours, often getting exhausted, run-down and, in the

end, extremely frustrated and depressed. It seems that no matter how

much they put in there is never enough time just to do the work set,

let alone read around the subject. They know they should do this,

if they are to develop a comprehensive grasp of the issues, and not

just a straight imitation of a major text, but despite all their good

intentions, they just cannot find the time. Parents worry, under-

standably, that they seem to do nothing else but study and get run-

down as a result.

And yet, as if to compound the problem, even with all their hard work

they seem to do no better. Working such long unstructured hours they

are rarely able to see the ideas objectively. They are simply too close

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