Works expands to fill time available?

Question

quotation by c northcote parkinson...

what does it means?

Answer 1

If you have an hour to complete a project, it will take you an hour to do it......even if it is something you could actually do in 30 minutes.

A similar one is "expenditure rises to meet income."

Answer 2

Kristin is right about this quote, and I thought that I was the only living person, left who remembers this author, I guess that means, I am just old.

But just in passing, there is another, by the same author.

"Every man rises to the level of his own incompetence",  ( it means, quite simply, that the individual, arrives at a status commensurate with his ability, to deal with the society he understands, (not that of the work he does), i.e. if a man, can not understand the sociodynamics of a situation, he can not manipulate it to his advantage, and remains at the level he can deal with it in his daily life, (as we all know someone, who is of a high degree of competency, but who is never promoted), this is an acuter observation, that status, is related, not to competency, but to the ability, to manipulate others for our own benefit....i.e the "crawler" who is incompetent, but nevertheless rises to a higher level than the deserving, by virtue of his ability to "suck upwards and kick downwards"...he has an inherent ability to recognise, and work toward his own best interests...

Answer 3

the more work you do the faster you do it the extra time will only fill up with more work to do

Answer 4

This is known as Parkinson's Law. It is named for its originator, Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who first stated it in a humorous essay in 1955.

This means that if you have a project that would reasonably only take, say, half an hour, but you have all day to work on it, you'll spread it out so that the project takes all day.

What it's trying to say is that no one will finish any project ahead of schedule, they'll drag it out so that it takes more time--or rather, all the time there IS for it because most people are paid hourly wages.

Answer 5

Yes, and with the Peter Principle we have 'side issue specialisation' which most of my bosses have majored in.  It really is astonishing how many managers seem to have read no books at all.  My most recent boss, who just managed to get her school shut, claimed to have an MBA but had a managerial approach centred on a) hiding in the library and b) ranting at any staff who asked her a question.  Ah, Drucker, what crimes are committed in thy name...