“Work expands to fill the time available to do it“. That’s Parkinson’s Law.

Many many years ago, my dad introduced me to the book and concept. I have seen it in action everyday.

Assume you had 5 hours to do a job, and you actually require only 3. The time that you would take to complete the same job would be more than 3 ! This is not about whiling away time. Its about work expanding!

For ex; It it was a letter, you would have experimented with the fonts, ran spell checks etc. Work would have expanded! Simple solution: Take cognizance of time, and always allot multiple activities, with definite time spans planned!

The Peter Principle is my all time favourite. Its another pithy concept which states
“Every person will get promoted until he reaches his position of incompetence”.

Ex: A supervisor in a bakery who was excellent at making soft loaves of bread gets promoted as manager. He begins an advertising campaign, which states “ We are the best Loafers in town” ! Well, he was a great supervisor, but was incompetent for the position of manager!

Don’t we all see such characters in our daily life ! By the way, there is a corollary to this law. And that states, “ At any given point, some profile in the organisation is occupied by a person who is incompetent for that position” ! Wow ! Afterall, there is a scientific reasoning for that !

If you have a lot of time and a lousy boss, well, thats when you rob Parkinson to pay Peter !!