Parkinson's law

The C++ Programming Language

by Bjarne Stroustrup  · 2 Jan 1986  · 923pp  · 516,602 words

designs and principles for choosing between them. More practical and more concrete than most books on design. Contains extensive C++ code examples. C. N. Parkinson: Parkinson’s Law and other Studies in Administration. Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 1957. One of the funniest and most cutting descriptions of disasters caused by administrative processes. Bertrand Meyer

Network Security Through Data Analysis: Building Situational Awareness

by Michael S Collins  · 23 Feb 2014  · 446pp  · 102,421 words

attack, an analyst will often tolerate a higher false positive rate in order to more effectively defend against that attack. There’s a sort of Parkinson’s Law problem here. All of our detection and monitoring systems provide only partial coverage because the Internet is weird, and we don’t really have a

Androids: The Team That Built the Android Operating System

by Chet Haase  · 12 Aug 2021  · 580pp  · 125,129 words

engineering to describe the process of spending way too much time working on something that probably doesn’t matter that much. Wikipedia equates it with Parkinson’s Law of Triviality, exemplified by a committee formed to discuss plans for a nuclear power plant instead spending most of its time discussing the color to

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

by Olivia Fox Cabane  · 1 Mar 2012  · 287pp  · 81,014 words

progress as efficiently as possible, avoiding the procrastination pitfalls that ensnare so many first-time authors. One author friend reminded me of a maxim called Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” He challenged me: “Rather than letting the writing process fill the entire year

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–54 open-ended questions, 123 Oracle, 119 oscillators, 146 outgoing personalities, 10 owning the stage, 193–94 oxytocin, 73, 170, 198 Paramount Equity, 109, 215 Parkinson’s Law, 55 patience, 100, 103 pauses, 10, 106, 130–31, 141, 234 pausing, 129 in presentations, 196–97 Pavlov, Ivan, 132 PayPal, 98 Penn, Sean, 68

The 1% Rule: How to Fall in Love With the Process and Achieve Your Wildest Dreams

by Tommy Baker  · 18 Feb 2018  · 170pp  · 46,126 words

YOURS FALL IN LOVE WITH DELAYED GRATIFICATION ALWAYS MOVING FORWARD TAKE NOTE ALONG THE JOURNEY CULTIVATING ENDURANCE CHAPTER 8: THE 1% BLUEPRINT THE 1% QUESTION PARKINSON’S LAW ANSWERING THE QUESTION E-MAIL AND SOCIAL MEDIA CAN WAIT AUDIT DELETION RESISTANCE DAILY GAME CHAPTER 9: CRAFT YOUR VISION LET GO PAINT YOUR MASTERPIECE

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basis will prove priceless to you—if used with intention and clarity after you’ve done the work required to know where you’re going. PARKINSON’S LAW We’re all crammers. Human nature dictates we are, so your tendency to cram for your final exams in high school and college has likely

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up against the wall. Urgency in life matters but it must be used the right way, and without the constant rollercoaster we’ve all experienced. Parkinson’s Law (Parkinson 1955) is one of the most studied, researched, and used concepts in productivity for great reason. The principle, written by C. Northcote Parkinson, is

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last minute. However, this is not a long-term strategy for success. It’s stressful and usually leaves us exhausted the next day. What makes Parkinson’s Law powerful is that it mirrors a universal law where empty space will be filled by the lowest possible priority. One of my mentors, Dr. John

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importance. As a culture, we’re trained to do the busy work that makes us feel productive yet doesn’t truly move us forward. Using Parkinson’s Law, we quickly realize that today’s “high urgency/high importance” happened because we were distracted and procrastinated the day before. The activity or execution step

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manufacture urgency on the regular, and reap the rewards: Cut your micro-target completion times in half. Intensity is jet fuel for creating urgency, and Parkinson’s Law will ensure you take the entire time. Instead, cut all your target completion dates in half, and get started now. Set daily targets, and celebrate

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World. New York: Grand Central Publishing. Olsen, Jeff and John David Mann. 2013. The Slight Edge. Austin, Texas: Greenleaf Book Group Press. Parkinson, C. Northcote. “Parkinson’s Law.” The Economist, November, 1955. https://www.immagic.com/eLibrary/ARCHIVES/GENERAL/GENREF/P551100L.pdf Pressfield, Steven. 2012. The War of Art: Break through the Blocks

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister  · 2 Jan 1987  · 261pp  · 16,734 words

Project Is Failing Chapter 2 Make a Cheeseburger, Sell a Cheeseburger Chapter 3 Vienna Waits for You Chapter 4 Quality—If Time Permits Chapter 5 Parkinson’s Law Revisited Chapter 6 Laetrile Part II The Office Environment Chapter 7 The Furniture Police Chapter 8 “You Never Get Anything Done around Here between 9

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would take nerves of steel, at least the first time. Your principal concern would be that Parkinson’s Law would be working against you. That’s an important enough subject to warrant a chapter of its own. 5. Parkinson’s Law Revisited Writing in 1954, the British author C. Northcote Parkinson introduced the notion that work

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expands to fill the time allocated for it, now known as Parkinson’s Law. If you didn’t know that few managers receive any management training at all, you might think there was a school they all went to

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for an intensive course on Parkinson’s Law and its ramifications. Even managers that know they know nothing about management nonetheless cling to that one axiomatic truth governing people and their attitude toward

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work: Parkinson’s Law. It gives them the strongest possible conviction that the only way to get work done at all is to set an impossibly optimistic delivery date

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. Parkinson’s Law and Newton’s Law Parkinson’s Law is a long way from being axiomatic. It’s not a law in the same sense that Newton’s law is a law

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inference. Parkinson was a humorist. His “law” didn’t catch on because it was so true. It caught on because it was funny. Of course, Parkinson’s Law wouldn’t be funny if there weren’t a germ of truth in it. Parkinson cites examples of his law as observed in a fictitious

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anything done. The result is that your people have the possibility of lots of job-derived satisfaction. That leads to a simple truth worth stating: Parkinson’s Law almost certainly doesn’t apply to your people. Their lives are just too short to allow too much loafing on the job. Since they enjoy

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be avoiding work, or who seems to have no standard of quality, or who just can’t get the job done. Doesn’t that confirm Parkinson’s Law? In a healthy work environment, the reasons that some people don’t perform are lack of competence, lack of confidence, and lack of affiliation with

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as Parkinsonian workers doesn’t work. It can only demean and demotivate them. Some Data from the University of New South Wales Of course, the Parkinson’s Law mentality is not going to go away just because we say it ought to. What would help to convert managers would be some carefully collected

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data proving that Parkinson’s Law doesn’t apply to most workers. (Forget for a moment that Parkinson supplied no data at all to prove that the law did apply, he

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collection standard. Each year they focused on a different aspect of project work. The 1985 survey provided some data that reflects on the inapplicability of Parkinson’s Law. It isn’t exactly the “smoking gun” that completely invalidates the law, but it ought to be sufficient to raise some doubts. Lawrence and Jeffery

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no schedule pressure whatsoever (“Just wake me up when you’re done.”) had the highest productivity of all. Of course, none of this proves that Parkinson’s Law doesn’t apply to development workers. But doesn’t it make you wonder? The decision to apply schedule pressure to a project needs to be

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the time, it’s just a sign that you’ve got problems of your own. Variation on a Theme by Parkinson A slight variation on Parkinson’s Law produces something that is frighteningly true in many organizations: Organizational busy work tends to expand to fill the working day. This effect can start when

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to take on the Furniture Police, fight corporate entropy, defeat teamicidal tendencies, put more quality into the product (even if time doesn’t permit), repeal Parkinson’s Law, loosen up formal Methodologies, raise your E-Factor, open your kimono, and do a host of other things. It doesn’t take great prescience to

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, 233 Breaking up jelled teams, 171 Bridges, William, 206 Bronstein, Lev Davidovich, 99 Brown University, 55 Brunner, John, 50 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 123 Bureaucracies Parkinson’s Law in, 25–26 as team obstacle, 146 Busy work, 29 C Calling in well, 161–163 Capital, employees as, 125–130 Catalysts importance of, 10

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-sclerosis, 187 New employee costs, 117–119 New South Wales, 27–29 New Status Quo phase in Satir Change Model, 208 Newton’s Law vs. Parkinson’s Law, 25–26 No-flow states, 62–63 Noise, 37 in creative space, 75–76 density factor, 54 flow factor, 61 quality effects, 52–53 Non

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Bell, retraining at, 123 Paging systems, 40, 73 Pair mates as performance factor, 46 Paperwork Methodologies, 178 as team obstacle, 146 Parkinson, C. Northcote, 25 Parkinson’s Law, 25–29 Partial attention, 114 Parts view of employees, 9–10 Passion, 19 Passive consent for e-mail, 201–202 Past work demonstrations in hiring

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, 10–11 definitions, 8–9 error handling, 8 failed projects, 3–5 false hopes, 31–34 interchangeable view of employees, 9–10 overtime, 15–16 Parkinson’s Law, 25–29 productivity and turnover, 16–18 project development, 7–8 quality, 19–23 Spanish Theory, 13–14 workaholics, 15–16 People Store attitude, 9

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differentials, 46–47 false hopes, 31–34 Hawthorne Effect, 181 office environment, 41–48, 57–60 office space savings, 49–55 overtime effects, 152–154 Parkinson’s Law myths, 25–29 and pressure, 28 and quality, 21–22 Spanish Theory management, 14 turnover effects, 16–18, 128–129 Professional standards, 96 “Professional” term

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–129 Status meetings, 194 Status-seeking as office environment issue, 75 Steady-state production thinking, 10–11 Stone, Linda, 114 Strikes in Australia, 179 Surveys Parkinson’s Law, 27–29 project failures, 3–4 Swarthmore College, 86 T Tailored work space pattern, 84–85 Tajima, D., 22 Talk:do ratio, 101–102 Task

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman

by Timothy Ferriss  · 1 Dec 2010  · 836pp  · 158,284 words

-the-go for a minimum of 12 bars. For my preferred mix, search for the “Training 33” bar. Parkinson’s Law by Cyril Northcote Parkinson (www.fourhourbody.com/parkinsons) This is the seminal book on Parkinson’s Law, written by Parkinson himself. Everyone you meet will want to tell you how to train and eat. Read

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PAGG warnings about Paleolithic “paleo” diet palmitoleic acid Palumbo, Dave “Jumbo,” 150, 13.1, 17.1 Parazynski, Scott Pareto, Vilfredo Pareto’s Law Parisi, Bill Parkinson’s Law partial completeness Paul (testosterone) Pavlina, Steve PC (phosphocreatine) PC (pubococcygeus) muscle Pearl, Bill pear shape peer pressure Penn, B. J. periodization Perls, Tom Phelps, Michael

Cooking for Geeks

by Jeff Potter  · 2 Aug 2010  · 728pp  · 182,850 words

whole dish out and order pizza. (Mmm, pizza: cheaper than a visit to the emergency room.) Note Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Potter’s Corollary to Parkinson’s Law: Kitchen stuff expands so as to fill every last shelf and drawer. Kitchen stuff expands to fill

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freezing, How to Prevent Foodborne Illness Caused by Parasites, Sous Vide Cooking pH levels and, Acids and Bases trichinosis and, Wet brining paring knife, Knives Parkinson’s Law, Kitchen Pruning parma torte, Regional/Traditional Method pasteurization defined, Foodborne Illness and Staying Safe eggs and, The 30-Minute Scrambled Egg food safety and, How

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Organization splatter guards, Bar towels thermal conductivity of, Pots and pans, Methods of Heat Transfer types of, Cutting boards, Kitchen Pruning Potter’s Corollary to Parkinson’s Law, Kitchen Pruning Poulette Sauce, Adapt and Experiment Method poultry (see ) Powdered Brown Butter, "Melts" in your mouth: Maltodextrin Powell, Doug, How to Prevent Foodborne Illness

The Personal MBA: A World-Class Business Education in a Single Volume

by Josh Kaufman  · 2 Feb 2011  · 624pp  · 127,987 words

huge difference?” Write only those tasks on your MIT list, then try to get them done first thing in the morning. Combining this technique with Parkinson’s Law (discussed later) by setting an artificial deadline is extremely effective. If you set a goal to have all of your MITs done by 10:00

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how easy it is to accomplish some of the things that you assumed were simply dreams. SHARE THIS CONCEPT: http://book.personalmba.com/counterfactual-simulation/ Parkinson’s Law Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. —CYRIL NORTHCOTE PARKINSON, NAVAL HISTORIAN AND MANAGEMENT THEORIST In 1955, Cyril Northcote Parkinson

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when the deadline approaches, we start to make Choices and Trade-offs to do what must be done to complete the task by the deadline. Parkinson’s Law should not be considered carte blanche to set unreasonable deadlines. All projects take time—you certainly can’t build a skyscraper in a day or

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a factory in a week. The more complex the project, the more time it typically takes—to a point. Parkinson’s Law is best used as a Counterfactual Simulation question. What would it look like if you finished the project on a very aggressive time scale? If

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, you must set limits. Juggling hundreds of active tasks across scores of projects is not sustainable: you’re risking failure, subpar work, and burnout. Remember Parkinson’s Law: if you don’t set a limit on your available time, your work will expand to fill it all. If you don’t draw the

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incomplete or inaccurate in a few important respects. Update your plan as you go along, using what you learn along the way, and continually reapply Parkinson’s Law to find the shortest feasible path to completion that works, given the necessary Trade-offs required by the work. 6. Measure to see if what

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Options defined -oriented business, requirements of Outflows Overhead in allowable acquisition cost (AAC) burn rate, monitoring components of Pareto principle Park, James Parkinson, Cyril Northcote Parkinson’s law Past performance measure Pattern matching, mental Patterns, identifying for value creation Patterson, Kerry Pavlina, Steve Pavlov, Ivan Perceived value high/low, examples of Perceptual control

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-fold how five-fold why goals growth mind-set habits hindsight bias locus of control monoidealism most important tasks (MITs) multitasking, avoiding mystique next action Parkinson’s law performance load personal research and development Pomodoro Technique priming recommended reading self-elicitation states of being stress and recovery and team. See Working with others

Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving

by Celeste Headlee  · 10 Mar 2020  · 246pp  · 74,404 words

never happened. Corporate management still has a nineteenth-century mind-set in a twenty-first-century workplace. This state of affairs is partly explained by Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” That’s not a scientific principle but an adage first expressed by the

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he simply discovered that long hours are inefficient. Nearly a century later, Ford’s conclusion has been proved correct over and over again. It is Parkinson’s Law made plain: Work expands to fit the time available. So if you know you only have two hours to write an agenda, research shows that

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, 2017. “We know from our experience”: Ford, “Why I Favor Five Days’ Work with Six Days’ Pay.” “General recognition of this fact”: C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law (London: John Murray, 1958), 4. They found that those who put in excessive hours: Raymond Van Zelst and William Kerr, “Some Correlates of Technical and

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