No. 10 “That’s bikeshedding.”

arguing about the easy stuff.

When a big, hard decision & a small, easy one share a meeting, the easy one eats all the time.

Everyone can weigh in on a button color. Fewer can weigh in on a checkout flow.

Decide the small stuff fast. Save the meeting for the hard stuff.

In 1957, C. Northcote Parkinson joked about a committee that okays a nuclear reactor in 2½ minutes, then debates a bike shed for 45.

He called it the law of triviality.

In 1999, programmer Poul-Henning Kamp coined “bikeshedding.”

• C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson’s Law (1957)
• Poul-Henning Kamp, FreeBSD mailing list (1999)

Save this for the next time a meeting spends an hour on a button color.