# Parkinson’s law

> The observation that work tends to expand to fill the time made available for it.

## What it means

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” — C. Northcote Parkinson, The Economist, 19 Nov 1955. The automated fetch of economist.com was blocked here, so the writer must The essay’s satirical setting (civil-service staffing) against its modern time-management use; how it pulls the opposite way from the planning fallacy; practical use: shorter, explicit limits that you review.

## A practical example

A simple update takes the full afternoon when “done” and a stopping time were never defined.

## Put it into practice

- Name the concrete situation before applying the label. Parkinson’s law is useful only when it changes a choice, boundary or next action.
- Make the state visible: write the owner, time, source or stopping condition down instead of relying on memory.
- Review what happened. Keep the part that reduced ambiguity and change the part that added ceremony without helping the work.

## How it relates to Plexii

give a desk a Duration and watch the countdown; at the end Time’s up asks whether you need more (/help/desk-status-time).