Parkinson’s Law

Why you should create more fake deadlines.

The Boring Company’s two-mile test tunnel underneath the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, CA

Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a British Naval historian and professor. And he was skeptical of bureaucracy.

In 1955, Parkinson published an essay saying so. And in the first sentence of his essay he strung together 12 words that became known as Parkinson’s Law:

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

According to Parkinson, this is why bureaucracies expand over time. Officials have an incentive to add subordinates. And to create work for one another. Without accountability, it expands.

However.

The inverse of Parkinson’s Law can also be true.

Work contracts to fill the time available for its completion.

During a meeting in 2018, Elon Musk asked his leadership team how long it would take to remove staff cars from a SpaceX company parking lot so he could start another project: digging the first test hole for The Boring Company tunnel.

They said, “Two weeks.”

Musk countered, “Let’s get started today and see what’s the biggest hole we can dig between now and Sunday afternoon, running 24 hours a day.”

The cars were gone and there was a hole in the ground in less than 3 hours.

Work expands. And contracts. To fill the time available for completion.