You Can Choose to Stop Wasting Time, Money, and Space.

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This is an old adage known as Parkinson's Law. The law evolved from en essay written by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1955. In this essay, Parkinson detailed his time with the British civil service and highlighted the mind-numbing bureaucracy he experienced. He details the fictional example of a woman who is tasked with writing a postcard and posits the following:

“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.”

This all-day postcard writing affair is contrasted with the 3-minute effort put forth by a busy man tasked with the same job.

“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.”

How could it be possible that one person spent an entire day on a task while another spent just 3 minutes completing the exact same thing?

Simply because one person had a full day to assign to the task and the other only had 3 minutes for it.