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C. Northcote Parkinson - The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved · the Daily Quote - Positive Daily Inspiration and Motivational Quote of the Day

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  Podcasthero.com. Welcome to The Daily Quote, the
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  podcast designed to kick start your day in a positive way.
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  I'm your host, Andrew Mcgibbon, and let's jump right into
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  today's quote from C Northcott Parkinson, a British naval
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  historian who studied how organizations work.
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  In his 1957 book Parkinson's Law, he described what he called
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  the law of triviality. He once said the time spent on
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  any item of the agenda will be the inverse proportion of the
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  sum involve. What does that mean?
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  Inverse proportion? Basically, the less important
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  something is, the more time we spend on it.
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  Parkinson illustrated this with a brilliant example.
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  Committee approving plans for a nuclear power plant spend most
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  of their time debating what materials to use for the staff
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  bicycle shed, while barely discussing the actual nuclear
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  reactor. Why?
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  Because everyone understood bike sheds.
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  Everyone could have an opinion, everyone felt qualified to
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  contribute. But the nuclear reactor?
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  Too complex, too intimidating. So they approved it quickly and
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  moved on. This happens everywhere in
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  business and your personal life right now.
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  You'll spend hours deciding which CRM sales software to use,
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  but only 15 minutes making the sales calls.
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  You'll spend days researching the perfect best chair, but
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  won't spend an afternoon planning your career trajectory.
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  You'll obsess over small decisions where everyone has an
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  opinion while the mission critical tasks that require deep
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  thinking get ignored. The bike shed is easy to
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  understand. The nuclear reactor is hard, so
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  we waste time on bike sheds while the reactor gets built
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  without proper scrutiny. So here's the question, what's
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  your bike shed right now? What trivial activities are you
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  spending time on while the hard, important work goes untouched?
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  Because the law of triviality isn't just about committees,
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  it's about you today. Stop the dating the bike shed.
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  Go build that reactor. That's it for today.
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  I'm Andrew McGivern, signing off for now, but I'll be back
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  tomorrow. Same pod time, same pod station
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  with another daily quote.