Would you rather have less work to do or more work you enjoy doing? (p 3) How to improve our time management and increase our productivity In the chapter “How to rule the office - Work life”, Oliver Burkeman seems to support the view that productivity is inversely proportional to the time spent at work. He mentions Parkinson’s law, according to which “works expands to fill the time available for its completion”. In other words, people usually take all the time allotted to accomplish any task. Burke suggests that, if we had just a few hours to carry out a task, we would make the most out of them, and we would probably accomplish the same result as if we had been sitting a whole day at the office. This view is further reinforced by the so-called “Colour of the Bike Shed Phenomenon”: the time spent on any item (or task) will be in inverse proportion to its importance. Burkeman also states that most meetings should be abolished, because, as a matter of fact, many senior executives have been reported to find at least half of all meetings unproductive and plain useless. According to them, important information should be transferred in written form or discussed over by e-mail. Of course, reducing our working hours and cutting out meetings is not enough to increase our productivity: in order to really make the most out of the time we spend at work, it’s vital to remain as concentrated as possible and to avoid interruptions, and Burkeman gives us a number of tips on how to do it.