Parkinson's Law

Biological Parallel

Bacteria in a petri dish don't ration nutrients—they consume everything available until the medium is exhausted. Metabolic systems expand to match resource availability, not need. This is Parkinson's Law encoded in biology: work expands to fill the time allocated because, like bacteria in glucose, human systems lack internal governors. Constraints must be external. Deadlines aren't arbitrary—they're the petri dish walls that prevent infinite expansion.