Work always expands to the time available!

let's say a project has three weeks to go. The team is 95% done, but somehow the work fills the entire three weeks regardless. It's tight at the end. Nobody was lazy. The work just quietly grew to match the runway it was given.

Sounds familiar?

That's the (satirical) Parkinson's Law: work expands to fill the time available. 🤷 And left alone, I think it costs teams an enormous amount of focus.

I personally don't think you can 'fix' this from happening by simply working harder. Somehow, buffers always get eaten up (they must be yum!) Our brains pace themselves. Hand someone a loose, open-ended deadline, and some part of them relaxes the throttle. The result is slower, more scattered effort, stretched over more days.

So what actually helps?

Not brutal, arbitrary deadlines. Those just create panic and worse work. What helps is deadlines that are tight AND honest. Enough pressure to keep focus. Enough room to do it well.

Here's a great coaching question start: "If you had half the time to get to the same result, what would you cut?"

Not because you should always halve it. But that one question exposes the padding. The meetings that don't move much. The polishing nobody asked for. The waiting.

I use a version of this with clients constantly. Often the goal isn't to work more. It's to see how much of the "work" was never the work at all.

What's one task on your list that's quietly grown too big?