See this at: maxwideman.com| Added on 02/21/08

"There is a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding performance of tasks within planned durations. A task is hardly ever completed ahead of schedule. There are several reasons for this. We can demonstrate these using an illustration of a task that has a... See more

"There is a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding performance of tasks within planned durations. A task is hardly ever completed ahead of schedule. There are several reasons for this. We can demonstrate these using an illustration of a task that has a 50-50 chance of being completed in 5 days, but has been scheduled for 10 days to allow for uncertainty, risk, emergency diversions, and so on. First, there is Parkinson's Law. Work expands to fill the time available for the work. Work on the task has commenced on schedule and is essentially completed within the first 5 days. But, because 10 days have been allocated for the task, the performer spends the next 5 days fine-tuning the deliverable. This is a natural work ethic of most people. We reach 98 percent completion on our task and, if additional time is available, we attempt to refine it until a delivery deadline is reached. Second, is procrastination. We are able to start the task as scheduled. But, because there are 10 days allocated,... See less