Revisiting Parkinson's Law - Cal Newport

Parkinson's Law dictates that a task will become bigger in importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

Parkinson’s Law almost certainly doesn’t apply to your people. Their lives are just too short to allow too much loafing on the job. Since they enjoy their work, they are disinclined to let it drag on forever—that would just delay the satisfaction they all hanker for. They are as eager as you are to get the job done, provided only that they don’t ha

In that essay, Parkinson proposed what became his eponymous law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If something must be done in a year, it’ll be done in a year. If something must be done next week, it’ll be done next week. If something must be done tomorrow, it’ll be done tomorrow. We plan based on how much time we

‘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.5 But