parkinson's law

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

I usually have 9-10 accounting problems to do each week, which usually take around five or six hours to complete. Last night I only had one. It took me seven.

Parkinson's Law <3

Parkinson's law

Parkinson's law is an administrative principle that states that work tends to expand in relation to the time available for its completion. From C. Northcote Parkinson, a professor of the University of Malaysia, who first wrote of this law. While Parkinson, like Laurence J. Peter, apparently wrote his book as a satire on administration, unfortunately it turned out to be true.

It's a sad rule of corporations, and universities are not exempt, that the administrative apparatus tends to expand with time. Unfortunately, this is accompanied by stasis in what is accomplished. Parkinson's law holds true.

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Parkinson's law for warez and porn

Parkinson's law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." Extensive research by volunteers has shown that for warez and porn, a similar principle applies. The applied Parkinson's law states that "warez and porn expand so as to fill the storage space available." The law's application in this context suggests also that warez and porn are gaseous in nature.

In practice this means that over time, the storage space occupied by warez and porn files increases to fill any void present on the writable storage medium they are contained on. During research it was shown that no matter how large the researcher's hard drives grew, warez and porn always expanded to fill any space available.

Some of the longer-term researchers also reported that the growth rate of warez and porn seemed to closely follow Moore's law. Further research is required to determine if this is the cause or an effect of Parkinson's law's applicability to warez and porn. It is even possible that the inverse is true - that warez and porn are in fact the cause for Moore's law in the first place.

Damn that Parkinson - my porn drive is full again.

I know - warez and porn expand so as to fill the storage space available.

Yeah, that's why they call it the lame reference to Parkinson's law for warez and porn.

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Parkinson’s law

Despite common misconceptions, Parkinson’s law is in fact more akin to Poka Yoke whereby a relentless focus on increasing the efficiency of an organization through any means necessary benefits both employees and shareholders.

When a management consultant applied Parkinson’s law to make my call center more efficient by requiring us to badge in to use the bathroom, I was initially upset because I could no longer take a nap in the stall after lunch, but soon realized I got more done at work at slept better at night. Win win!