parkinson's law

noun

1. the statement, expressed facetiously as if a law of physics, that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.

noun

1. the notion, expressed facetiously as a law of economics, that work expands to fill the time available for its completion

1955 (in the “Economist” of Nov. 19), named for its deviser, British historian and journalist Cyril Northcote Parkinson (1909-1993): “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” A law propounded by the twentieth-century British scholar C. Northcote Parkinson. It states, “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”