(no subject)
Lately, I've been reading The Law Complete by C. Northcote Parkinson. It looks like it's out of print (I've got my dad's copy), which is too bad. Because it is a very funny, very dry, very British book detailing very true things about How Society Works. There's one "official" Parkinson's Law, but The Law Complete presents several profound insights into life. Some of them may sound familiar:
Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
1. Likewise, expenditure rises to meet income.
2. More generally, demand rises to meet supply.
a. The reverse is not true.
The Coefficient of Efficiency: In committee, the more trivial the issue, the more time will be spent discussing it.
The Law of Delay: Delaying action can be as effective as deciding not to act.
There's a whole (ludicrous) section on how promotions work, another (silly) one on how to force executives to retire, and one (insightful) section about taxation that takes a good swing at socialism's limits. Some of the book hasn't aged well, other parts are more cynical than I care to be, but there was this one line in the section about Delay Equals Denial about how gathering information does not equal thinking that sounded eerily prescient. Of course, there's the opposite problem of trying to look proactive by neither gathering information nor thinking...
Long story short: the dude knows human nature. I can appreciate someone who knows human nature.
Parkinson's Law: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
1. Likewise, expenditure rises to meet income.
2. More generally, demand rises to meet supply.
a. The reverse is not true.
The Coefficient of Efficiency: In committee, the more trivial the issue, the more time will be spent discussing it.
The Law of Delay: Delaying action can be as effective as deciding not to act.
There's a whole (ludicrous) section on how promotions work, another (silly) one on how to force executives to retire, and one (insightful) section about taxation that takes a good swing at socialism's limits. Some of the book hasn't aged well, other parts are more cynical than I care to be, but there was this one line in the section about Delay Equals Denial about how gathering information does not equal thinking that sounded eerily prescient. Of course, there's the opposite problem of trying to look proactive by neither gathering information nor thinking...
Long story short: the dude knows human nature. I can appreciate someone who knows human nature.