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Parkinson's law says that "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." I think that a similar observation can be made for people worrying about stuff. To paraphrase: "Problem salience expands so as to fill the capacity available for worrying.”

Suppose a person is worried about several problems. Let's visualize the mental state of this person, where each problem is represented by a colored circle, and the size of the circle corresponds to how much this problem occupies the person:

This person worries about 5 things, with the yellow and green ones being the most important ones.

Now, when one of these problems is resolved, one would expect that this problem simply gets removed from the ‘mental space’, making the person less worried in proportion to the size of the resolved problem:

The person now worries less, because the big problem was resolved.

Naive expectation: The person now worries less, because the big problem was resolved.

However, I don’t think this accurately describes what actually happens! Instead, it seems that the unresolved problems become [...]

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First published:
March 29th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Hxf5efdDuuP5dfu6i/parkinson-s-law-of-worry

Linkpost URL:
https://unpredictabletokens.substack.com/p/parkinsons-law-of-worry

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Images from the article:

Large circle containing four smaller circles of varying sizes in different colors.

Diagram showing six colored circles of varying sizes inside a larger circle.

Diagram showing circles merging into one, then separating again.

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