Parkinson's Law
Parkinson's Law claims that:
- Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
- If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.
- The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource (If the price is zero).
- The amount of time that one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task.
I'm scared to admit that this is very likely true, especially with things that I work on. When I'm sometimes forced to push something out with very little time and under pressure, I'm often surprised (and secretly bummed) that no one notices. Time boxing and forcing mechanisms are probably good things, in many cases.