# Parkinson's Law of Worry

[Parkinson’s law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_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:

[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j1Nz!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd9d49f4e-305f-438f-bce3-0711bf9317fb_629x629.png)

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



](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!j1Nz!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd9d49f4e-305f-438f-bce3-0711bf9317fb_629x629.png)

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:

[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qKUg!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb76f11a0-2dfe-46f7-bddf-1e8868df6590_629x629.png)

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



](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qKUg!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb76f11a0-2dfe-46f7-bddf-1e8868df6590_629x629.png)

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 more salient to the person, as if to fill the available space in the person’s mental state:

[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZjZE!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1c6f264e-5b76-4779-bd1b-2b7e160ba428_629x629.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!ZjZE!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1c6f264e-5b76-4779-bd1b-2b7e160ba428_629x629.png)

Or, new problems pop inside the freed space — the problems which weren’t important enough to worry about as long as there were more pressing ones:

[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0etS!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa97baed2-a9fd-4b87-ae5e-3c99396955f3_629x629.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!0etS!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa97baed2-a9fd-4b87-ae5e-3c99396955f3_629x629.png)

The upshot is that in the beginning, the person would be wrong to think that they will worry much less or be much happier after the most important problems are resolved. They will just worry about different things!

What could help to prevent this scenario is to try to periodically recall some of the resolved problems and the amount of worrying they caused before they were resolved. By remembering this, the importance of other problems can shrink again (it’s relative, so they should still be less important than the yellow problem was!).

[![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!R2mv!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61897bec-5f71-44b8-9cc6-17859a227d55_2065x724.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!R2mv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F61897bec-5f71-44b8-9cc6-17859a227d55_2065x724.png)

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**Related concepts:** *Adaptation level theory, hedonic treadmill, gratitude, negative visualization.*