It is true that work can expand to fill the time allotted but it can expand far beyond that. It can expand beyond the life of the organization and the company can go bankrupt, a government can fall, a civilization can crumble into barbarism, while the incompetents work on.

# Material exhaustion and disinterest in material rewards

I think the purpose shifts really because sometimes you are thinking, you know I have got all the time to do the things that I want to do and then realise like that it could be gone.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

That which is repeated too often becomes insipid and tedious.

There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

Ambition displeases when it has been sated... Having reached the peak, it aspires to descend.

Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want.

...if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

Satisfaction comes from the inside out, so people keep gravitating from things externally to try to fill something – get a man to complete them, get money to complete them, get a job to complete them – and still find themselves frustrated.

Just like work expands to fill the time available, work expands to fill the team available. Small, short projects quickly become big, long projects when too many people are there to work on them.

A man would die, though he were neither valiant, nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft, over and over.

Le trop grand empressement qu'on a de s'acquitter d'une obligation est une espèce d'ingratitude.

If you serve too many masters, you'll soon suffer.