Parkinson's Law

 "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion". Coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1955, this principle explains why tasks often take longer than necessary: if you allocate two weeks for a two-hour task, the task will likely consume the full two weeks.

My time as a Programme / Project Manager was filled with explaining this and things like the Mythical Man-Month.  The Mythical Man-Month was a series of Essays on Software Engineering and project management by Fred Brooks first published in 1975, with subsequent editions in 1982 and 1995. Its central theme is that adding manpower to a software project that is behind schedule delays it even longer.

And at the moment - I am falling into the trap that I used to lecture on and practised when I was doing Code Red recoveries of failed projects.  It's funny because I know that I am doing it and like many others, I am happily letting work slide knowing full well that I will pay for it in stress and looming milestones!

Time slips one day at a time and it is so easy to let it slide and ride and then all of a sudden, you've got to do something about it.  

I am conscious that I've had 9 years of abuse in reality from people who have no idea what it takes to get things done and who appear to have forgotten everything I taught them about business, finance, risk and marketing, sales and modern internet based business.  Now that is ending I've made myself unwind and try and forget about it.  The result is that other things that I should be doing are in the backseat with the other, "I can do that later" stuff.  

I need the break and I need the space to get over the trauma (and I think that is the right word) especially in the last year and a half that I've been subjected to.  It doesn't go away either, it should but in face it fades and like the tides comes lapping back in to remind you even though there's not much left to say or do about it now.  Taking time off is therapeutic and necessary so maybe I will have to live with the short term stress of hitting deadlines on my own tasks as I slowly recover from all the other nonsense?  

I just need to remind myself to "eat my own dog food!" as the phrase goes and practice what I preach.