LYCOS RETRIEVER
Parkinson's Law
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Parkinson's Law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion," a statement that has often been used as an excuse for managers to over-agressively schedule. This seminal work takes a look at modern business management, and is a must-read for anyone involved in a management role.
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Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fit the time allocated to it, in some respects the inverse of this can be used for more effective time management. If you would normally allocate a large amount of time to get something done then try allocating a smaller amount of time and you should be able to get more done in less time. This obviously has a limit but if you set realistically smaller time limits then you should be able to accomplish more and manage your time more effectively.
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Parkinson's Law is flawed in so many ways -- see for example the book Peopleware, where it shows that the highest productivity comes when there is no schedule at all. Peopleware pokes holes in all kinds of "common knowledge."
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Parkinson's Law explains the trap that most people fall into. This is the reason for debt, money worries and financial frustration. It is only when you develop sufficient willpower to resist the powerful urge to spend everything you make that you begin to accumulate money and move ahead of the crowd.
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Parkinson's Law of Data prov. "Data expands to fill the space available for storage"; buying more memory encourages the use of more memory-intensive techniques. It has been observed since the mid-1980s that the memory usage of evolving systems tends to double roughly once every 18 months. Fortunately, memory density available for constant dollars ... tends to about double once every 18 months (see Moore's Law); unfortunately, the laws of physics guarantee that the latter cannot continue indefinitely.
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Another reason to believe Parkinson's Law doesn't apply is that it describes a defect in how corporations operate, not a universal law of nature. If the corporation doesn't use simple, single-criteria success factors to decide on promotion, people don't rise to a level where they are incompetent. It's when corporations use single criteria, like sales figures, to decide who gets a promotion, that they promote incompetent managers.
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