Parkinson's Law Quotes

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson's Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

The more time you have to do things, the less you are able to get done.

Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” still known as Parkinson’s Law.

The solution is really simple: Figure out what time you can carve out, what time you can steal, and stick to your routine. Do the work every day, no matter what. No holidays, no sick days. Don’t stop. What you’ll probably find is that the corollary to Parkinson’s Law is usually true: Work gets done in the time available.

Set deadlines, and make them short. Parkinson’s Law states that your tasks will expand to take up the amount of time allotted for them. Shorten your personal deadlines and be amazed at how you complete all your tasks, regardless!

At first he found it amusing. He coined a law intended to have the humor of a Parkinson’s law that "The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite." It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses. Even when his experimental work seemed dead-end in every conceivable way, he knew that if he just sat down and muddled about it long enough, sure enough, another hypothesis would come along. And it always did. It was only months after he had coined the law that he began to have some doubts about the humor or benefits of it. If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. The law is completely nihilistic. It is a catastrophic logical disproof of the general validity of all scientific method! If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge

Parkinson’s Law: If you have only one letter to write, it will take all day to do it. If you have twenty letters to write, you’ll get them done in one day.

If you want to double your productively, shorten the timeline to by 50%.

Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its completion.

Parkinson’s law states that work will fill the time you set aside to do it.

Parkinson’s law says that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinson’s law (coined by British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1957) states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

Never has anyone milked a single thought more vigorously and successfully than he did. The line for which he is remembered was “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” still known as Parkinson’s Law. It was first elucidated in a comic essay he wrote for The Economist in 1955 while he was a professor at the University of Malaya in Singapore.

Sayre’s law, named after political scientist Wallace Sayre, offers that in any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake. A related concept is Parkinson’s law of triviality, named after naval historian Cyril Parkinson, which states that organizations tend to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in 1955, coining what became known as Parkinson’s law. But it’s not merely a joke, and it doesn’t apply only to work. It applies to everything that needs doing. In fact, it’s the definition of “what needs doing” that expands to fill the time available.

COACHING TIPS • Give yourself permission to “waste” a little time. If you’re not spending 5 percent of your day building relationships, you’re doing something wrong. • Define your work hours and stick with them. Remember Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available.” This isn’t to say there won’t be times when you must work overtime, but if you’re consistently the last one left at the office, there’s something wrong with that picture.

1. Recruit the smallest group of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly and with high quality. Comparative Advantage means that some people will be better than others at accomplishing certain tasks, so it pays to invest time and resources in recruiting the best team for the job. Don’t make that team too large, however—Communication Overhead makes each additional team member beyond a core of three to eight people a drag on performance. Small, elite teams are best. 2. Clearly communicate the desired End Result, who is responsible for what, and the current status. Everyone on the team must know the Commander’s Intent of the project, the Reason Why it’s important, and must clearly know the specific parts of the project they’re individually responsible for completing—otherwise, you’re risking Bystander Apathy. 3. Treat people with respect. Consistently using the Golden Trifecta—appreciation, courtesy, and respect—is the best way to make the individuals on your team feel Important and is also the best way to ensure that they respect you as a leader and manager. The more your team works together under mutually supportive conditions, the more Clanning will naturally occur, and the more cohesive the team will become. 4. Create an Environment where everyone can be as productive as possible, then let people do their work. The best working Environment takes full advantage of Guiding Structure—provide the best equipment and tools possible and ensure that the Environment reinforces the work the team is doing. To avoid having energy sapped by the Cognitive Switching Penalty, shield your team from as many distractions as possible, which includes nonessential bureaucracy and meetings. 5. Refrain from having unrealistic expectations regarding certainty and prediction. Create an aggressive plan to complete the project, but be aware in advance that Uncertainty and the Planning Fallacy mean your initial plan will almost certainly be incomplete or inaccurate in a few important respects. Update your plan as you go along, using what you learn along the way, and continually reapply Parkinson’s Law to find the shortest feasible path to completion that works, given the necessary Trade-offs required by the work. 6. Measure to see if what you’re doing is working—if not, try another approach. One of the primary fallacies of effective Management is that it makes learning unnecessary. This mind-set assumes your initial plan should be 100 percent perfect and followed to the letter. The exact opposite is true: effective Management means planning for learning, which requires constant adjustments along the way. Constantly Measure your performance across a small set of Key Performance Indicators (discussed later)—if what you’re doing doesn’t appear to be working, Experiment with another approach.

Parkinson’s law. This law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

Norton's Law: Anything that can be done by a machine, will be done by a machine. Work will change to things that can’t be done by machines.

Norton's Law: Anything that can be done by a machine, will be done by a machine.

But if we have carefully chosen indicators that characterize an administrative unit and watch them closely, we are ready to apply the methods of factory control to administrative work. We can use de facto standards, inferred from the trend data, to forecast the number of people needed to accomplish various anticipated tasks. By rigorous application of the principles of forecasting, manpower can be reassigned from one area to another, and the headcount made to match the forecasted growth or decline in administrative activity. Without rigor, the staffing of administrative units would always be left at its highest level and, given Parkinson’s famous law, people would find ways to let whatever they’re doing fill the time available for its completion.

Parkinson’s law? Coined by Cyril Parkinson, a twentieth-century British historian and scholar, it states: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”5

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline. If I give you 24 hours to complete a project, the time pressure forces you to focus on execution, and you have no choice but to do only the bare essentials. If I give you a week to complete the same task, it’s six days of making a mountain out of a molehill. If I give you two months, God forbid, it becomes a mental monster. The end product of the shorter deadline is almost inevitably of equal or higher quality due to greater focus.

There’s a principle called Parkinson’s Law, after the man who coined it, Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson. Parkinson’s Law goes like this: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Here’s how that looks when you apply it to the world of personal finances: Whatever I have, I spend. Actually, in today’s world it usually means something more like this: Whatever I have, I spend that—plus a little more. How hard is it to put aside a few dollars a day, or a little each week? Ridiculously easy. Yet most of us don’t do it. The United States has one of the highest per capita income rates in the world—and one of the lowest savings rates. Why is that?

It can be also known as the Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”   It means that if you give yourself 2 hours to do a work, it is likely that you will spend 2 hours. If you give yourself 3 hours for the same work, you will surely spend 3 hours.

A sermon expands to fill the time allotted to complete. it

Work expands to fill the time allotted to complete it

Writing in 1954, the British author C. Northcote Parkinson introduced the notion that work expands to fill the time allocated for it, now known as Parkinson’s Law. If you didn’t know that few managers receive any management training at all, you might think there was a school they all went to for an intensive course on Parkinson’s Law and its ramifications. Even managers that know they know nothing about management nonetheless cling to that one axiomatic truth governing people and their attitude toward work: Parkinson’s Law. It gives them the strongest possible conviction that the only way to get work done at all is to set an impossibly optimistic delivery date. Parkinson

Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective—doing less—is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest. Of course, before you can separate the wheat from the chaff and eliminate activities in a new environment (whether a new job or an entrepreneurial venture), you will need to try a lot to identify what pulls the most weight. Throw it all up on the wall and see what sticks. That’s part of the process, but it should not take more than a month or two. It’s easy to get caught in a flood of minutiae, and the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities. Take time to stop and smell the roses, or—in this case—to count the pea pods. The 9–5 Illusion and Parkinson’s Law I saw a bank that said “24-Hour Banking,” but I don’t have that much time.

That's far from the case. Instead, this is a basic example of “Parkinson’s Law” which states: “A task will swell in proportion to the amount of time you give yourself to complete it.” What I mean is if you give yourself a long time to complete a project, you'll actually give it less focus and it will drag on for longer than necessary. It will turn out much better if you shorten your deadline. If you have a shorter deadline, you’ll produce a much higher quality book in a more focused time period. Instead of thinking that fast writing means bad writing, cement this thought into your mind: “Writing fast means being more focused.” By now that should put away any disempowering fears and questions you’ve been asking yourself like:

This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines. If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace

Managers know that software development follows Parkinson's Law: Work will expand to fill the time allotted to it. If you are in the software business, perhaps you are familiar with a corollary to Parkinson called the Ninety-Ninety Rule, attributed to Tom Cargill of Bell Labs: "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time." This self-deprecating rule says that when the engineers have written 90% of the code, they still don't know where they are! Management knows full well that the programmers won't hit their stated ship dates, regardless of what dates it specifies. The developers work best under pressure, and management uses the delivery date as the pressure-delivery vehicle.

Parkinson’s Law which is an adage that says that, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” 

Parkinson’s Law: If you tend to procrastinate, one of the excuses you might use is that you work best when you are under pressure. Parkinson’s law validates this justification.

I’ve mentioned Parkinson’s law in a couple of my other books. It dovetails nicely with the 80/20 rule. This law states that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” So if you give yourself five hours to clean your home, you’ll take five hours. If you shorten the available time frame to two hours, you’ll get everything done in two hours.

When we are given the space, as Parkinson’s Law dictates, we expand our work to fill the time. Set aggressive deadlines so that you are actually challenging yourself on a consistent basis, and you’ll avoid this pitfall. A long deadline also typically means a sustained level of background stress—push yourself to finish early and free your mind.

The same goes for chores: in her book More Work for Mother, the historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan shows that when housewives first got access to “labor-saving” devices like washing machines and vacuum cleaners, no time was saved at all, because society’s standards of cleanliness simply rose to offset the benefits; now that you could return each of your husband’s shirts to a spotless condition after a single wearing, it began to feel like you should, to show how much you loved him. “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in 1955, coining what became known as Parkinson’s law. But it’s not merely a joke, and it doesn’t apply only to work. It applies to everything that needs doing. In fact, it’s the definition of “what needs doing” that expands to fill the time available.

Parkinson’s law states that work expands to fill up all the time available to do it.

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in 1955, coining what became known as Parkinson’s law.

Parkinson’s Law, proposed the “coefficient of inefficiency”: Once a committee grows to more than eight members, it becomes less efficient with each new member added, becoming useless once it hits twenty.

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

To that end, Big Farma John has petitioned the Court to read into the record a portion of an amicus (friend of the court) brief, written by the Honorable Bobby Jingoism from the great state of Alabama, where the judge ends a nearly one hundred page scathing attack on the character of Christian Cultura, by concluding, ‘Look only to the letter of the law and not to Mr. Cultura’s self-serving and hauntingly absurd spirit of the law, where it has been shown on many occasion he will stop at nothing to use his devilish charm as a scoundrel might to lure a blind alley cat off a shrimp boat.

Use Parkinson’s Law to accomplish more in less time. Shorten schedules and deadlines to necessitate focused action instead of deliberation and procrastination.

But what Rios-Parkinson really appreciated about the climate laws was how much control over the masses they provided the elite. Global warming, he mused, was the best thing that ever happened to progressivism.

Improper planning: Parkinson’s law suggests work expands to fill the space and time available for its completion. In other words, if we were given sixty minutes to complete a task that requires only thirty minutes, we still take sixty minutes to complete it. Workaholic syndrome: High performers seek to create more value with less effort, whereas workaholics seek to simply do more. High performers invest significant focus on strategy and the mental game, allowing them to exert less effort in the physical game.

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,” the English humorist and historian C. Northcote Parkinson wrote in 1955, coining what became known as Parkinson’s law. But

Parkinson’s Law: if you don’t set a limit on your available time, your work will expand to fill it all.

Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

El trabajo se expande hasta llenar el tiempo disponible para que se termine.

Parkinson’s law (yes, another law by the same Parkinson of Parkinson’s law of triviality) states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

She looked at her watch. She said, “Why is it when someone says between two hours and four hours it’s always nearer four hours than two hours?” “Parkinson’s disease,” Shorty said. “Work expands to take up as much time as there is.” “Law,” Patty said. “Not disease. That’s when you get the shakes.

Use Parkinson’s Law on a Macro and Micro Level. Use Parkinson’s Law to accomplish more in less time. Shorten schedules and deadlines to necessitate focused action instead of deliberation and procrastination.

Chances are you’ve heard some form of Parkinson’s law: “Work expands so as to fill up the time available for its completion.” You’ve also undoubtedly heard of Murphy’s law: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.” Well, next time you’re at a swanky cocktail party and you want to impress somebody, try dropping Manson’s law of avoidance on them: The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid it.

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. It is the magic of the imminent deadline.

Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If you give yourself 2 hours to finish a task, you’ll take 2 hours to finish it. Give yourself 45 minutes and set a timer, and you’ll likely finish it in that amount of time.

In 1955, a modern philosopher named C. Northcote Parkinson came up with the counterintuitive Parkinson’s Law: that the demand for something expands to match its supply. In economics, this is called induced demand—it’s why expanding roads to reduce traffic congestion never works in the long term because more drivers always show up in their cars to fill those extra lanes.

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Whatever deadline you give yourself, big or small, that’s how long you’ll take to complete the work. If you give yourself a relaxed deadline, you avoid being disciplined; if you give yourself a tight deadline, you can draw on your self-discipline. Parkinson observed that as bureaucracies expanded, their efficiency decreased instead of increased. The more space and time people were given, the more they took—something that he realized was applicable to a wide range of other circumstances. The general form of the law became that increasing the size of something decreases its efficiency.