The Trivial & the Bureaucratic

The Bikeshed Effect (focusing on the trivial to the neglect of the important) is a spiral toward the insignificant.

The time and energy waster grows from a lack of working from priorities. If you don’t continuously cut off its oxygen, you adopt to the surrounding culture that fuels spotlighting the details.   

The Bikeshed Effect is related to Parkinson’s Law, which suggests a project will take as long as is given to finish it. The further out the deadline, the longer it will take to complete a task. Thus, bureaucracy expands to use up whatever resources are devoted to it.

To get at what’s underneath Parkinson’s Law and the Bikeshed Effect, why we focus on the trivial and put off deadlines, we must ask ourselves, “What are we afraid of?” Sabina Nawaz wrote in the Harvard Business Review:

When we’re scared, we might spin up a frantic list of activities to avoid confronting our fear. The more afraid we are, the more we retreat from what spooks us by believing we’re too busy to tackle it.

To escape the ranks of the fearful and dead bureaucrats, take a serious look at the angst underneath and disempower it.

Using Projects to Avoid Making Changes

If you are having trouble getting motivated to finish a project, consider the possibility that finishing that report (or whatever your project involves) means facing a void. The project is a distraction so that you don't have to see the emptiness outside of it. You slow down the completion until another project emerges to play the role of another distraction. You’re putting off looking at uncomfortable truths about yourself 

While in the midst of a deadline-driven project, you feel like you have a clear identity because your purpose is defined by the project's needs. But if the projects was removed from your life, would you have justification for thinking of yourself as someone of value? Is your worth  bound in the projects?

So it is with serious relationships, where someone provides a sense of purpose, giving definition and a sense of worth.

If you were forced to sit down and write out the definition of who you are without the benefit of a title (manager, employee, project manager) or relationship (wife, girlfriend, mother) would you lack the means to define yourself?

A suggestion: Spend time doing things that allow you to center yourself. Give yourself downtime to listen. Whatever brings you to stillness will put you in a good position to allow the transition to take hold and internalize it so you don’t miss the opportunity to make a paradigm shift toward greater emotional and spiritual health. Allow yourself to just "be" and reconnect with the world around you (its sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and sights).

Stephen Goforth

Your brain power on distraction

Imagine your task is to ride a bicycle for 10 miles. You begin to pedal and just as you build up speed and start making progress, something unexpectedly makes you hit the brakes. Because you had to stop, you’ve lost your momentum and have to expend more effort to get going again. Imagine you are forced to brake every time you start to go faster. You can never coast. You have to pedal — hard — all the time. How much longer do you think it’s going to take you to get to your destination? How much more difficult and frustrating do you think it’s going to be? This is your brain power on distraction, and it causes unsatisfying, unfulfilling work days.

Maura Thomas writing in the Harvard Business Review

Worry Deadlines

Parkinson’s Law, which states that work expands to the time we allow it. Put simply, if you give yourself one month to create a presentation, it will take you one full month to finish it. But if you only had a week, you’d finish the same presentation in a shorter time.   

I’ve observed a similar principle among sensitive strivers — that overthinking expands to the time we allow it. In other words, if you give yourself one week to worry about something that is actually a one-hour task, you will waste an inordinate amount of time and energy.

Melody Wilding writing in the Harvard Business Review