The Law

File under Procrastinate

In 1955, a British Military officer and Naval Historian at the University of Malaya in colonial Singapore wrote an article that appeared in The Economist. The article, which was later developed into a book, detailed a phenomenon that despite the reduction in colonial governments to administer, the number of government staff employed for that administration continued to increase.

That officer was Cyril Northcote Parkinson, and the phenomenon became Parkinson’s Law.

In his book he attributed the fact that the bureaucracy grew 5-7% per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done,” to two factors:

1) An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals
2) Officials make work for each other

Although we have probably all seen this happen in some capacity, what is more interesting to our daily lives is the corollary to Parkinson’s Law that states:

The amount of time it takes to perform a task is equivalent to the time available to do the task.

And next post I’ll talk more about that and about why procrastination is actually a good thing.

Song of the Day
I saw Subaru Outback commercial today and the song in the ad caught my attention because it sounded like it was sung by the singer/actress Zooey Deschanel. I was going to feature a cover song she sung as a part of her two-person band She and Him. It turns out the commercial song was sung by Miss Erika Davies who is pretty amazing in her own right. I’ll try to add her in one of these days, but today I wanted to feature the She and Him cover song and I was all set to do it until my father-in-law mentioned he rarely knew the groups I posted. So today I’ll throw one his way and feature the original artist of this song. Long explanation, I know. In honor of WLA, the song of the day is Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “You really got a hold on me”.

I also encourage you to check out the She and Him version