Parkinson's Law as commonly referenced states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." A more succinct phrasing also commonly used is "work expands to fill the time available." It was first articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, appearing as the first sentence of a humorous essay published in The Economist in 1955, later reprinted together with other essays in the book Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress (London, John Murray, 1958). He derived the dictum from his extensive experience in the British Civil Service. Cyril Northcote Parkinson (July 30, 1909 - March 9, 1993) was a British historian and author of some sixty books. ... The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London, UK. It has been in continuous publication since September 1843. ... This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... Year 1958 (MCMLVIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... The British civil service is the permanent bureaucracy that supports the Government Ministers responsible to the Sovereign and Parliament in administering the United Kingdom. ...

The current form of the law is not that which Parkinson refers to by that name in the article. Rather, he assigns to the term a mathematical equation describing the rate at which bureaucracies expand over time. Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of purportedly scientific observations supporting his law, such as the increase in the number of employees at the Colonial Office while Britain's overseas empire declined. He explains this growth by two forces: (1) "An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals" and (2) "Officials make work for each other." He notes in particular that the total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rose by 5-7% per year "irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done." The British Empire in 1897, marked in pink, the traditional colour for Imperial British dominions on maps. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      This article is about the sociological concept. ...

In time, however, the first-referenced meaning of the phrase has dominated, and sprouted several corollaries: for example, the derivative relating to computers: "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed over the last 10 years that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for a constant price also tends to double about once every 24 months (see Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely. This article is about the machine. ... Gordon Moores original graph from 1965 Growth of transistor counts for Intel processors (dots) and Moores Law (upper line=18 months; lower line=24 months) For the observation regarding information retrieval, see Mooers Law. ...

"Parkinson's Law" could be more generalized still as: "The demand upon a resource always expands to match the supply of the resource." An extension is often added to this, stating that "the reverse is not true." This generalization has become very similar to the economic law of cost and demand; that the lower the cost of a service or commodity, the greater the quantity demanded.

Parkinson also proposed a rule about the efficiency of administrative councils. He defined a coefficient of inefficiency with the number of members as the main determining variable. Coefficient of Inefficiency is a semi-humorous attempt of C. Northcote Parkinson to define the size of a committee or other decision making body at which it becomes completely inefficient. ...

Application of Parkinson's Law

Parkinson's Law is applied in many arenas of human endeavour.

• In Project Management, individual tasks with end-dates rarely finish early because the people doing the work expand the work to finish approximately at the end-date. Coupled with the Student syndrome, individual tasks are nearly guaranteed to be late.
• Individuals see this arise in their daily activities as well. No matter how many things one has on their plate, they all tend to get done. This leads to the canard, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person" because it appears they are better at "time management." While this may be true, it is just that they are doing more and the work is not expanding indefinitely to fill non-busy time.
• As an individual's income rises, their costs of living and lifestyle increases to meet their income level.
• Part of Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s observations are that once a core organisation exists, it will perpetuate and expand itself regardless of the reason it came into being.

Student Syndrome refers to the phenomenon that many people will start to fully apply themselves to a task just in the wake of a deadline. ...

See also

• Law (principle)
• Peter Principle
• Hofstadter's law
• Adages named after people
• The 48 Laws of Power
• Color of the bikeshed
• Coefficient of Inefficiency
• Student syndrome

For law within legal systems see law. ... For the BBC sitcom, see The Peter Principle (TV series). ... Hofstadters Law is a self-referencing time-related adage, coined by Douglas Hofstadter and named by himself. ... This is a list of adages named after people (eponymous adages). ... The 48 Laws of Power is a work by Robert Greene and published by Joost Elffers, compared to Machiavellis The Prince,[1] with the main difference being that the audience is not royalty, but the masses. ... The phrase color of the bikeshed is a proverbial phrase, referring to the apparent ease of which one can get approval for building a large and complex project such as a billion-dollar laboratory, while it is hard to get consensus to build something conceptually simple — because everyone involved wants... Coefficient of Inefficiency is a semi-humorous attempt of C. Northcote Parkinson to define the size of a committee or other decision making body at which it becomes completely inefficient. ... Student Syndrome refers to the phenomenon that many people will start to fully apply themselves to a task just in the wake of a deadline. ...

References

• Parkinson's Law, or The Pursuit of Progress, C. Northcote Parkinson, 1957. Parkinson's Law quoted in full
• Parkinson's Law, in The Economist (November 1955) - text with formula

External links

• Parkinson's Law by Prof. Cyril Northcote Parkinson - The Heretical Press
• "How Do You Cure Injelitance?"