We’ve all encountered Parkinson’s Law:
“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
I’ve been guilty of this behavior, and perhaps you have too. There have been times when I’ve given myself 2 hours to finish some task I could have gotten done in 20 minutes if 20 minutes were all I actually had to get the job done!
My friend Dave Gardner, a first-rate efficiency consultant in Silicon Valley, shares an absolutely terrific personal story about Parkinson’s Law in his “Thank God It’s Monday” blog this week. In this story, Dave and his co-worker (in Dave’s very first job out of college years ago) are getting the same amount of work done in 80 hours a week that other 2-person teams are taking 120 hours to complete. Yet, his upper management is upset because Dave and his co-worker aren’t working a combined 120 workweek (and receiving the overtime pay that goes along with it). I can’t decide if the story is hilarious or really sad. You can be the judge of that!
