Parkinson’s Law

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Dale calling from St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

Hello, Dale. Welcome.

Thank you.

What can we do for you?

Well, you helped me out with a word before, and I’m hoping that you can help me out again.

Okay, yeah.

There’s a word for the use of time that is allotted to you.

For instance, if somebody gives me a week to do something, I’ll use that week.

And the word’s not procrastination.

It’s a different word that I’ve heard, and I’ve lost the word.

And if somebody gives me a day to do the same project, I’ll use that day.

Or if they give me two hours, I will use that two hours.

And it’s a strange phenomenon.

If we have a certain amount of time to do something, we’ll use it.

You betcha.

And there’s a word in there.

Depending on your profession, it’s given different ways.

Work expands or contracts to fill the space and time available.

Money expands and contracts to fit the job available.

Stuff expands and contracts to fill the space available.

Lots of different variations on this.

But those are all what you mean, right?

Yeah.

Right.

There was an article in The Economist in 1955 written by a guy named Cyril Northcote Parkinson.

C-Y-R-I-L-P-A-R-K-I-N-S-O-N.

Cyril Northcote Parkinson.

And he described it this way.

It’s got two different parts to it.

One, any official seeks to multiply his subordinates,

And two, these subordinates make unnecessary work for each other.

And so he basically articulated this,

And you can see in the pages of magazines of the period

After this article was published in The Economist,

All of these people talking about this in every discipline,

Everyone going, aha, he’s finally identified the thing that I see happening.

You could see this in the British military at the time,

That even when the military underwent a reduction in force,

The amount of administrative personnel went up regardless.

And you found this again and again in industry after industry.

And a lot of people credit this kind of awareness within business of this idea

As the source to the modern business efficiency kind of drive.

All of these movements came out of recognizing when you were growing for no reason whatsoever,

When your growth or your cost weren’t related to your business and your sales.

So the term that arose from that article is Parkinson’s Law.

That’s right. We call it Parkinson’s Law.

And there’s a not bad entry in Wikipedia that does a fair job of summarizing Parkinson’s Law.

Oh, Parkinson’s Law.

Yeah, Parkinson’s Law.

Parkinson’s Law says that work and things expand and contract to fill the space or time available.

Yeah. Neat. I can use that then.

All right. Great. Thanks for calling, Dale. We really appreciate it.

Take care.

Okay, you too.

Bye-bye.

This reminds me of one of those old axioms from software programming,

And I think it comes from engineering, which is 90% of your work takes 90% of your time,

And the other 10% takes another 90%.

I think that’s true in a lot of fields.

We’d love to hear from you.

What are you arguing about at your workplace that has to do with language?

Tell us about it.

We’ll settle it or figure it out or at least make a model of it, 877-929-9673,

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