Work expands to fill the time available

You might want to give yourself a tight deadline.

If you have six months to do a project, and then another six months (as we did with our Exxon project), it'll take you that long. Or if you have a few hours, as we did at Occupy Wall Street, it'll take you that long. 

Instances in which we learned this lesson

Here's a sketchy timeline of the Yes Men's most mammoth project, a collaboration with the Anti-Advertising Agency and many other groups and…
Together with our brand-new police escort, we all headed towards the Wall Street Bull a few minutes south. When we got there, the protest changed…
The strange, meandering path that led to setting poor Reggie on fire as a step towards saving humanity.