Law Of Triviality: Why You Value Dumb Things

The law of triviality or bike-shed effect is our tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Author Northcote Parkinson gives the example of a fictional committee assigned to approve plans for a nuclear power plant. The team spent the majority of their time discussing relatively minor issues, like what materials to use for the staff bicycle shed, while neglecting the design of the plant itself. Of course, the power plant is way more important and a far more difficult and complex task. This is where the term bike-shedding comes from.

As Parkinson understood it, the time spent on any item will be inversely proportional to the sum of money involved. The reactor is so expensive and complicated that the average person cannot understand it, no matter how hard they tried. However, anybody can visualize a simple, unambiguous bike shed. Planning one therefore results in endless discussion because everyone involved wants to implement their proposal and demonstrate contribution. In other words, folks aren’t confident enough to put forth ideas for the plant because of how convoluted and costly it is, thus they default on the easier option. The goddamn bike shed.

Other authors have commented that the amount of noise generated by change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change. This outlines the same, general idea: people spend more time on small decisions than they should, and less time on big decisions than they should. The brain fears losses, social exclusion, and failure. Thus if it senses we don’t have enough information—we feel this as overwhelm—we counterintuitively stop collecting information and default to an easier decision. The problem is that big decisions require big research. Else we set ourselves up in a position to make errors. Conversely, for the small and trivial, bike-shed decisions, we hesitate and ponder for long.

You probably recall a time in your life when a lecturer was caught off track. Perhaps it was a language lesson where they spent a large portion of their time telling a personal story. Meanwhile, they skimmed over key grammatical rules or the upcoming vocabulary assessment the following day. Now you know your teacher fell for the law of triviality. They spent their time discussing something minor, losing sight of what is really important. It was more entertaining to them to listen to their own story, but it didn’t make for a better grade on that test the next day.

Real life implications of the law of triviality:

• Organizations: a team spends hours debating the design of a logo while neglecting the marketing or content writing strategy—solved by establishing clear priorities and delegating minor decisions, such as by employing the 80/20 rule or impact-effort matrix;

• Personal: an individual could spend excessive time arranging their desk instead of tackling a looming deadline—solved by identifying high-priority tasks and time-blocking to minimize distractions on trivial activities;

• Meetings: attendees debate the color scheme of a report but ignore discussing the project’s critical risks—solved by using a meeting agenda, an outline drawn beforehand to allocate time based on topic importance;

• Policy: a city spends disproportionate time debating the location of a bike rack while delaying decisions on major infrastructure projects and roadwork—solved by establishing a standard for discussion, like limiting time or using decision trees in order of financial and societal impact;

• Software: developers debate naming conventions in code but neglect critical bugs—solved by using code norms of directing attention first to high-impact, high-leverage fixes that reverberate across the platform;

• Corporate: in startups, teams could concentrate too heavily on choosing a logo while failing to define a value proposition for their product.

How to notice bike-shedding behavior: (1) there is excessive debate over minor issues; (2) there is universal participation, where everybody contributes, particularly those unrelated to their expertise, the topic is likely trivial; (3) there is neglect of high-stakes decisions, important, or complex topics.

Those are your flags. Here’s what you do with them. How to use bike-shedding as a mental model: (1) before diving into discussion, ask “Does this decision significantly impact the end goal?”, acting to orient attention on the high-impact areas; (2) delegate trivial decisions, assigning them to individuals which match their skill level and spec, freeing up resources for more pressing concerns—instead of endlessly debating the layout of a lunch menu, let one person decide and move on; (3) set time limits, like no more than five minutes deciding on the design and redirect attention to key initiatives; (4) encourage expertise-oriented orientation, structuring discussions so relevant stakeholders give their weigh in—that is, leave the engineering problems to the engineers; (5) try a decision framework, like the impact-effort matrix, plotting tasks based on their impact and complexity to prioritize.

Thought-provoking insights. “Don’t major in the minors.” stresses what avoiding bike-shedding does for you: concentrates you on issues that truly matter. “Pick your battles.” is a simple reminder to choose where you invest effort and attention wisely. “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” underlines how trivial issues get disproportionate attention because they are easy to engage with. The end product suffers because of bike-shedding. Attend to the important processes. The number one solution is to approach decision-making and discussion after we have ranked our priorities. This way, you can only consciously move yourself toward the non-priority, bike-shed decisions. You aren’t likely to sabotage yourself and your team.