<P> Hofstadter's law is a self - referential time - related adage, coined by Douglas Hofstadter and named after him . </P> <P> Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law . </P> <P> Hofstadter's law was a part of Douglas Hofstadter's 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid . The "law" is a statement regarding the difficulty of accurately estimating the time it will take to complete tasks of substantial complexity . It is often cited by programmers, especially in discussions of techniques to improve productivity, such as The Mythical Man - Month or extreme programming . The recursive nature of the law is a reflection of the widely experienced difficulty of estimating complex tasks despite all best efforts, including knowing that the task is complex . </P>

Everything takes longer than you think murphy's law