Parkinson’s First Law:  "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion"

British historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993) first coined this proverb in 1955 which came to be known as his most famous “Parkinson's Law”. A more succinct phrasing commonly used is "work expands to fill the time available." The phrase first appeared 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. 

Parkinson's First Law points out that people usually take all the time allotted (and frequently more) to accomplish any task.  

Parkinson's First Law is applied in many areas of life.

In Project Management, individual tasks with deadlines rarely finish early because the people doing the work expand the work to finish approximately at the end-date. This, of course, is counterproductive to proper planning. In the eDisco arena, planning is frequently a challenge.  No matter how many things one has on their plate, they all tend to get done. "If you want something done, give it to a busy person".  The perception is that busy people are better at "time management” than those who are not busy. While it may be certainly true that busy people are indeed better at time management, the reality is that they are just doing more and the work is not expanding indefinitely to fill non-busy time.

Parkinson's Ten Laws

There are actually ten (10) Parkinson’s Laws!  Here they are.  In the coming weeks, we will explore some of these.  Which of these do you think apply most to the practice of law and eDisco?

"Parkinson's Law" = Work expands to fill the time available.

"Parkinson's Second Law" = Expenditures rise to meet income.

"Parkinson's Third Law" = Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.

"Parkinson's Fourth Law" = The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.

"Parkinson's Fifth Law" = If there is a way to delay an important decision the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.

Parkinson's Sixth Law = The “Law of Science" - The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals published.

 Parkinson's Seventh Law = The “Law of Delay" - Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

"Parkinson's Eighth Law = The “Law of Meetings" - The time spent in a meeting on an item is inversely proportional to its value (up to a limit).

"Parkinson's Ninth Law = The “Law of 1000" - An enterprise employing more than 1000 people becomes a self-perpetuating empire, creating so much internal work that it no longer needs any contact with the outside world.

"Parkinson's Tenth Law = The “Law of Data" - Data expands to fill the space available.  Buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive applications.  Gordon Moore observed in the mid-1980s that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months.   Evolving systems create more data.  More data requires more space.