If the ship sinks, refrain from rearranging the deck chairs.
“Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” is a common metaphor for futilely trying to reform things in an already failing system. It’s also very akin to bikeshedding.
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We spend an inordinate amount of time on things of very little consequence. If you’ve ever been in a corporate or consulting environment, you’re surely familiar with things like endless meetings where all that’s decided is to have another meeting. Or Slack chats that stray away from their initial topic only to get stuck on nitty-gritty details like choosing Zoom backgrounds.
Why do we do it?
The easy answer is “because it’s easier”. But we don’t do easy around here, so let’s dive into the complexity of triviality pursuit.
Bikeshedding aka Parkinson’s Law of Triviality
Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a British naval historian, author, and the “father of two “laws” to help us work better. You’ve probably heard of Parkinson’s first Law: work expands to fill the time allotted for it. It’s a good reminder that you should set realistic deadlines for everything you do.
The second one is the Law of Triviality or bikeshedding. It describes our tendency to devote a disproportionate amount of time to menial tasks while leaving the important ones unattended.
Just like rearranging deck chairs instead of running swimming for your life.
To illustrate this bias, Parkinson asks his readers to imagine a committee meeting to discuss three things:
- A £10 million nuclear power plant
- A £350 bike shed
- A £21 annual coffee budget
The power plant is discussed for two and a half minutes. The bike shed gets 45 minutes, while the minuscule coffee budget gets 75 minutes — but no resolution.
Why? Let’s hear it from Parkinson himself:
“The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved.” A reactor is so vastly expensive and complicated that an average person cannot understand it), so one assumes that those who work on it understand it. However, everyone can visualize a cheap, simple bicycle shed, so planning one can result in endless discussions because everyone involved wants to implement their own proposal and demonstrate personal contribution.”
Parkinson’s explanation was written in the 1950s. In the meantime, behavioral sciences gave us a better understanding of how our brain works so we can dig a little deeper:
Bikeshedding is a fancy term for procrastination
By definition, daunting tasks are far outside our comfort zone. However, smack in the middle of the comfort zone nothing gets done.
But 21st century productivity gurus have told us that we have to keep busy; to have something to show at the end of the day. If you ever had to fill in an EOD report, you know what I’m talking about — it’s a great measure of creativity and it forces you to add bulk.
Not quality but quantity. The more tasks you can list in your EOD report or cross off your list, the better you feel.
But that doesn’t mean you’ve been productive. It just means you found a way to stay “comfortably busy”.
When we dread an important and difficult task, we assign more importance to the menial ones and, by extension, more time to get them done. Suddenly, we’re too busy to work on the big task.
If you ever spent endless hours in a meeting deciding what template to use for your invoices or arguing over a subtle color tone in your website’s hero banner, you know what I’m talking about.
Before launching adrianatica.com, I spent two weeks revising every single page with my designer — multiple times. One of our email threads has over 80 emails. I lost count of the phone calls and the chats we did.
Looking back on it, it’s clear that I was dreading the launch. It was scary and novel for me, so I stumbled upon every detail I could find. Because:
Bikeshedding is rooted in fear
Parkinson’s committee knew very little about nuclear plants, so they were afraid to voice an opinion — it’s a big responsibility to take on. Add the lack of expertise and you can understand why they glossed over it and lingered on matters any idiot could have an opinion about — safely. Inconsequential matters are safe.
As expected, fear and procrastination won’t get you too far.
Your way out of the bike shed
Before you’re too deep into the mire of triviality, consider adding more clarity to your meetings, to your agenda — to everything that involves making decisions.
Specificity and clarity will further your agenda.
There are two main things you can do:
- Avoid cramming divergent topics into a single meeting. Ideally, you should have one goal per meeting. If that’s not possible, make sure the goals are connected to each other: bundle coffee vendors and paper suppliers in a single meeting, but don’t add something as dissimilar as a bloody nuclear plant.
- Limit the number of stakeholders in a meeting or a decision chain. Does Pete from Accounting need to be there when you’re trying to choose a new CRM? Probably not. When people of different backgrounds and with different expertise areas are put together, the discussion will inevitably descend into banality and futility.
Triviality can be your friend too
Some decisions are complex and should never be hurried for the sake of crossing them off your list. Sometimes, you need 10 meetings and an endless email chain to comprehend the complexities and implications of choosing A instead of B.
This is when it’s useful to focus on trivial matters instead of forcing a major decision. Discuss the coffee budget if you need a break from the intricacies of building a plant. Plan that bike shed and encourage your team to use green transportation — it’s not a bad thing.
Some battles are lost before they start just like some days will be unproductive no matter how hard you try. Instead of spending hours trying to summon the mood for a daunting task, you can use this time to cross some of the menial but necessary ones off your list.
Lastly, there’s a more unorthodox use for bikeshedding: assign it to those who usually deviate from complex matters and drag everyone down into triviality. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but every (mid-size and upwards) company has them.
To quote Poul-Henning Kamp, the author of the famous email about bikeshedding sent to the entire FreeBSD team,
“You see it in politics, from national to school board and boy scout meetings. You see it in pretty much any meeting in a corporate context where somebody has a ladder to climb.”
Remember what I said above about not everyone needing to be in every meeting? Bikeshedding is remarkably useful when you apply it conscientiously. It increases clarity, reduces time-to-market, and helps everyone feel comfortable without having to get so far out of their comfort zone that it becomes dangerous for everyone.
That’s it from me today! See you next week in your inbox!
Here to make you think,
Adriana
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