How Work Expands to Fill the Time Available to Complete It

In 1955 British naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson published in The Economist an article about bloated government bureaucracies, stating:

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

He dubbed this Parkinson’s Law.

Unfortunately, Parkinson’s Law is commonly misinterpreted to be an assertion about procrastination and personal ineffectiveness. It’s nothing of the sort.

Links mentioned can all be found in the Heigh Ho article the episode is based on.

C. Northcote Parkinson; © National Portrait Gallery, London (licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0; modified with overlaid text)