Parkinson’s Law is: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” People misconstrue it all the time.

Logic plays funny tricks on our brains sometimes. People look at Parkinson’s Law and think that it’s telling us that work will expand (or contract) to fill the time to the deadline. So if I give you a project that will take you two weeks to do, and give you an eight-week deadline, you will not complete it for eight weeks.

That might be true. But it is also true that if I give you eight weeks’ work and a two-week deadline, you will complete it in two weeks. You’ll just do a really crappy job. The eight-week deadline, on the other hand, gives me the option of prioritizing other work first until I need to get to your project.

So, the problem here is not the gaseous nature of work—it’s that the deadlines themselves are considered a major element for prioritization. In other words, work is a game, and a major goal of the game is to get work done on time.

Sounds good.

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