#DidYouKnow: #ParkinsonsLaw is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion".

It first appeared as the opening line in an article for "The Economist" (1955) and later becoming the focus of one of Parkinson’s books, "Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress".

It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization.

https://knowledgezone.co.in/kbits/6137045d64eb6c487f5ecd57

Parkinson's Law (1955)

IT is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and despatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent in finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half-an-hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar-box in the next street. The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety and toil.

https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-law

The original essay on which this eponymous law is based.

#CNorthcoteParkinson #ParkinsonsLaw #TheEconomist #Sources

Work / capitalism expands to fill all available cognitive surplus.

That's the problem with Clay Shirky's premise.

See also David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Surplus

#CognitiveSurplus #ClayShirky #DavidGraeber #ParkinsonsLaw

@ArneBab @bzg "Much of the essay is dedicated to a summary of purportedly scientific observations supporting the law, such as the increase in the number of employees at the Colonial Office while the British Empire declined (he showed that it had its greatest number of staff when it was folded into the Foreign Office due to a lack of colonies to administer)."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_law

#ParkinsonsLaw