Parkinson’s Law

Author: Torgeir Páll Gíslason

Parkinson's Law is as defined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 19955: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". That is, work takes as long as the time it's given. In recent years this law has been studied to try to make workers and students more efficient and waste as little time as possible. For example, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA put forth a theory about it as he said "If you split your day into ten-minute increments, and you try to waste as few of those ten minute increments as possible, you will be amazed at what you can get done". Many more scholars have theories on the topic

History

Origin Author Practice

Implementation

Using Parkinson's Law to your advantage

The formula

{\displaystyle x={\frac {2k^{m}+P}{n}}} x – number of new employees to be hired annually k – number of employees who want to be promoted by hiring new employees m – number of working hours per person for the preparation of internal memoranda (micropolitics) P – difference: age at hiring − age at retirement n – number of administrative files actually completed

References

https://personalmba.com/parkinsons-law/ https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/what-is-parkinsons-law https://www.wealest.com/articles/parkinsons-law