Spotlight :
Parkinson ’ s Law and what it tells us about saving for retirement
By Izak Smit , PPS CEO
n August , PPS hosted a retirement summit which was attended by a few thousand
I members . One of the speakers was Louis Fourie , well-known adviser and mentor to South African professionals and business leaders , who shared some wisdom around personal finance , such as travelling light , backing your aspirations with good habits , and taking tomorrow ’ s money off the table first . It was this last one that reminded me of a “ law ” that I was introduced to many years ago : Parkinson ’ s Law .
Now , Parkinson ’ s Law should not be confused with Parkinson ’ s Disease . The latter is a disorder of the central nervous system that affects movement . It is not a modern illness – it was named after the English physician James Parkinson , who in 1817 , published a comprehensive description titled An Essay on the Shaking Palsy .
Parkinson ’ s Law , on the other hand , was named much later by the British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson , who wrote a satirical essay that was published in The Economist in 1955 . The concept that Parkinson introduced was framed in the opening line of his essay as :
“ Work expands to fill the period of time available for its completion .
”
It soon took on a life of its own , forming the basis of several more essays . The concept was studied by productivity economists at length . Even Mikhail Gorbachev , the last leader of the Soviet Union , noted in the 1980s when the Soviet Union bureaucracy was in its death throes , that “ Parkinson ’ s law works everywhere ”.
In his opening paragraph , Parkinson uses the example of an elderly lady who writes a postcard to her niece . “ An hour will be spent in finding the postcard , another in hunting for spectacles , half-an-hour in a search for the address , an hour and a quarter in composition . The total effort which would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told , may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt , anxiety and toil … there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff or the time period to which it may be assigned .”
Parkinson was well-qualified to make these statements , having worked in the British civil service for most of his
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