Parkinson's law

Related to Parkinson's law: Peter Principle, Murphy's Law

Parkinson's law

The facetious notion that a person will find ways to fill the amount of time they are given to do something, even if they could complete the task sooner. Don't tell him he has until the end of the month to finish it, because he'll find a way to spend that whole time doing it. Instead, tell him he just has two weeks, and he'll finish it in that time. It's Parkinson's law.
See also: law
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

ˈParkinson’s law

(humorous) the idea that work will always take as long as the time you have to do it: I don’t know why this report is taking me so long. Parkinson’s law, I suppose.This is the title of a book by C. Northcote Parkinson about inefficient administration.
See also: law
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • had sooner (do something)
  • sooner than you think
  • not going to win any beauty contests
  • street time
  • no sooner said than done
  • crack wise
  • get shot of
  • get shot of (someone or something)
  • get shot of someone/something
  • Chinese
References in periodicals archive
Second, while Parkinson's Law makes a prediction only about time commitment, we found that longer incidental deadlines increase monetary commitment.
So to return to your question: does Parkinson's law of triviality apply to the [agency] procurement process?
Seneca thus pre-empted Parkinson's Law that says, 'work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
"Murphy's Law and Parkinson's Law have both contributed to an Olympics Law which says the bigger a thing becomes, the more problems it attracts and the sooner it hastens its own demise."
What we are now witnessing is the new 'Parkinson's Law of Subsidies'.
Harriss began his assessment of NATO with a description of its pricey new and futuristic glass and steel 2.7 million square-feet headquarters and the building's many amenities for its Brussels staff of 4,500, which he described as "a stately pleasure-dome for coddled fat cats" and a "perfect illustration of Parkinson's Law" that bureaucratic expansion usually accompanies an organization's loss of its original raison d'etre: preventing a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.
Quiz of the Day ANSWERS: 1 Astronomy and navigation; 2 As ski-jumper 'Eddie the Eagle'; 3 The Glums; 4 Parkinson's Law; 5 Coronations of British monarchs; 6 Off-break; 7 Downton Abbey; 8 Great Britain and the United States; 9 F.W.
For example, consider Ecclesiastes 5:10, "As the bounty increases so increase the consumers thereof." To my understanding, this is in one sense a generalization of Parkinson's Law, "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" (C.
Anyone who needs to read each word of a letter or article in order to understand its essence or theme should at least be capable of recognising irony and Parkinson's Law.
Parkinson's law says that work expands to fit the time available - tasks take as long as you give them.
I think I need to wade in here with Huntington's Inverse Law of Writer Behavior: "The need for any writer to ask for an emergency extension of his deadline is inversely related to the already lengthy amount of time they've had to finish the article." Which is closely connected with "Parkinson's Law" which reads: "Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion."
Northcote Parkinson, a British historian and author formulated Parkinson's Law (Parkinson, 1958).
Without being pejorative, figures of this type tend to follow a derivative of Parkinson's law, expanding to fit the available space on the balance sheet.
Whatever the merit of Parkinson's Law, the blunt economic truth is that Birmingham is not doing as well as many of its competitor cities.
With application sizes doubling every 18 months according to Gate's Law and the associated file sizes growing at nearly the same rate as dictated by Parkinson's Law, end-users are often finding data transfer times unacceptably slow on networks running at less than 1 Gb/s.