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The Kitchen Table

Phrase of the day 2/22

jim_1 (Zone 5B)

5 years ago

Parkinson’s Law

C. Northcote Parkinson, distinguished British author and for some years Raffles Professor of History at the University of Malaya, expounded in 1957 Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time allotted to it, or conversely, the amount of work completed is in inverse proportion to the number of people employed.”

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Comments (5)

salonva
5 years ago
I have never heard that term, but I have definitely seen it in action.:)
maire_cate
5 years ago
Thanks for that one Jim. I've been mistakenly calling it the Peter Principle. I looked it up and realized that the Peter Principle states that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their level of incompetence. An employee who is successful in one job will be promoted to a job with a different or higher set of skills that they are not able to master.
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My sister can relate somewhat because once while berry picking, she dropped her car key. It involved hunting around on a forest floor like looking for "a needle in a meadow." She was relieved to find the key and not have to call the car rental company and ask for rescue!
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Piggy-backing again :-) In the late 1700's, many houses consisted of a large room with only one chair. Commonly, a long wide board folded down from the wall, and was used for dining. The 'head of the household' always sat in the chair while everyone else ate sitting on the floor. Occasionally a guest, who was usually a man, would be invited to sit in this chair during a meal. To sit in the chair meant you were important and in charge. They called the one sitting in the chair the 'chair man.' Today in business, we use the expression or title 'Chairman' or 'Chairman of the Board..'
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Stacey_mb Thank you, that was interesting. This kind of information fills in those holes in books or other reading material where the meaning of a phrase isn't always familiar to the reader.
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Stacey_mb I worked in a government library, and didn't know the formal definition of a white paper until now! ETA: name.
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Fun2BHere
5 years ago
I never knew it was called that, but I've certainly experienced the effect.
HU-681687602
5 years ago
Stacey_mb

I have a related issue, called Optimistic Cooking: The time required to make a new recipe expands three-fold from the expected time calculated after reading the recipe.
User
5 years ago
At work the saying was: If you need a job done, give it to a busy person.

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