When "God's Timing Isn't Your Timing" is Unhelpful Advice

Parkinson’s Law, Hofstadter’s Law, and the two most common mistakes people make when considering a timeframe for hearing God about a decision.

Jun 17, 2025

As part of Hear from God in 40 Emails (or Less), we’re exploring the five steps that will prime you to hear from God: 1) Clarify the Question, 2) Set a Deadline, 3) Name Your Options, 4) Pray for Indifference, and 5) Ask for Guidance.

Have you ever heard of Parkinson’s Law?

It’s named after C. Northcote Parkinson, a naval historian, who in the 1950s wrote an article for The Economist in which he opens with the line, “It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”1

Parkinson’s Law means that if you give yourself a week (or someone else gives you a week) to complete a project, it’s going to take you a week. It might not be as good as it would be if you had two weeks, a month, or a year, but it will likely get done.

But, there’s another law that sits in tension with this one.

It’s called Hofstadter’s Law, which as Oliver Burkeman explains in Time Management for Mortals, “states that any tasks you’re planning to tackle will always take longer than you expect, ‘even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.’”2

Hofstadter’s Law means that, if you think that renovation project is going to take a week, it’ll probably take two (especially if you’re not on a deadline). Trust me, I know this from experience.

When setting a deadline or timeframe for experiencing God’s guidance about a decision that you’re trying to make, I believe that keeping these two laws in mind will help you avoid the two most common mistakes people make.

Before we explore those mistakes, though, you might be wondering: Can you really put God on a deadline?

When Jesus Put God on a Deadline

You might have heard things like, “God’s timing isn’t your timing” or “He has perfect timing: never early, never late.”

I agree, in theory, but when those phrases (which aren’t in the Bible) mean you can’t have a deadline for making a decision, they’re missing the point. And, Jesus, is proof of that.

Arguably, one of the most significant decisions Jesus ever made was choosing which of his many followers would be appointed as “apostles”—the people that he would invest extra time in and send out to take the gospel to new places. Getting this decision wrong would have been detrimental to the early growth of the church, and getting it right had the potential to set the church off on the right foot from day one.

Listen to how one of the gospel accounts describes how Jesus made this decision:

¹²During those days he went out to the mountain to pray and spent all night in prayer to God. ¹³When daylight came, he summoned his disciples, and he chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: ¹⁴Simon, whom he also named Peter, and Andrew his brother; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew; ¹⁵Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot; ¹⁶Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor. (Luke 6:12-16, CSB)

What was his deadline? By sunrise.

It’s possible (and, I believe, quite likely) that Jesus had been already thinking about this particular decision for weeks, months, or longer at this point, but eventually he seems to set a deadline. Why? He didn’t have years to make this decision. He was well aware that crucifixion, a fixed deadline, was coming.

Does this mean that you should give yourself until sunrise tomorrow to hear from God with whatever decision you’re facing? Absolutely not.

So, how do you set the right timeframe for seeking God’s guidance?

Two Mistakes When Setting a Timeframe

When setting a timeframe or deadline, there’s two common mistakes, in addition to not setting a timeframe at all, that most people make—and I've made both of these mistakes at some point in my own journey.

You Set a Timeframe That’s Too Short

Years ago, at our annual family Christmas party, I asked my grandma a question I had been thinking about lately, “What does it mean to wait on God?”

It’s one of those phrases that’s all over the Bible, especially in the Psalms. In one place, among others, the Psalm writer says, “I wait for the Lord; I wait and put my hope in his word. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning—more than watchmen for the morning” (Psalm 130:5-6).

My Grandma Eva, who was in her 90s at the time, seemed like someone who might know what it means to wait on the Lord. So, I asked her what it meant.

“I don’t know what waiting on God means,” she said, “but I have a feeling that it means longer than a few minutes.”

That’s good advice from my grandma in a cultural moment that’s largely lost the ability to wait—a fact that’s backed up by the research of cultural commentator Christine Rosen.

At one point in her research, she visited a monastery and discovered the way that waiting seems built into the rhythms of life there. And, she realized, “The monks wait because they are listening for the voice of God, and they accept that it might take a lifetime before they hear it.”3

That’s why, when setting a timeframe, give it as much breathing room as possible and enough time to be patient as you wait for the Lord to speak to you. You might have a singular day or week, like Jesus, when you think more intentionally about a decision you’re trying to make, but make that the capstone of a longer season spent listening for God’s voice.

In other words, take into account Hofstadter’s Law and assume that experiencing God’s guidance might take a bit longer than you expect.

You Set a Timeframe That’s Too Long

The alternative problem is setting a timeframe that’s too long.

We often set a timeframe that’s too long, if we set one at all, in the name of not wanting to impose a deadline on God, but a lot of the time it’s just baptized indecision.

The problem is that sometimes there are hard and fast deadlines that you can’t ignore no matter how spiritual you think you are. That job or program has an “apply by” date. That significant other isn’t going to wait around forever for you to put a ring on it. That house will sell at some point.

By setting a deadline, you’re not saying to God, “You better speak to me by the stroke of midnight on July 15, or I’m going to make this decision myself.” You’re just naming the reality for yourself that, in many of the decisions you face, there are actual deadlines that, if you fail to make a decision by a particular day, the decision has already been made for you regardless of whether God spoke to you or not. A lack of a timeline is a recipe for indecision, and it won’t be God’s fault, it will be yours.

If you wait too long to make a decision, it doesn’t matter if God speaks to you out of a burning bush two weeks after the “apply by ” date. You’ve already missed the critical window.

That’s why Parkinson’s Law can be helpful.

Set a start and end date for a season when you’re intentionally listening for God’s voice about a decision you’re trying to make, and you might be surprised by how God gives you everything you need to make that decision within that window.

What’s Your Timeframe?

With those two mistakes in mind, set a deadline or timeframe that’s in the sweet-spot between too short or too long—perhaps, working backward from a fixed deadline if you have one or creating an "artificial" deadline if you don’t have one.

Be realistic and open to the possibility that your timeframe is wrong because, yes, God’s timing isn’t always your timing, but sometimes it is.

If you’re wondering where to start, try forty days—or, if you’ve got the time, give yourself to the end of this email series at the end of the year.