<P> Some define the law in regard to time as: </P> <P> The amount of time that one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task . </P> <P> Parkinson also proposed a rule about the efficiency of administrative councils . He defined a "coefficient of inefficiency" with the number of members as the main determining variable . This is a semi-humorous attempt to define the size at which a committee or other decision - making body becomes completely inefficient . </P> <P> In Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress, London: John Murray, 1958 a chapter is devoted to the basic question of what he called comitology: how committees, government cabinets, and other such bodies are created and eventually grow irrelevant (or are initially designed as such). (The word comitology has recently been independently invented by the European Union for a different non-humorous meaning .) </P>

The amount of space matter fills is its