Bikeshedding

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Recently found a new favorite word, one that we’re all familiar with in experience.

bikeshedding

Bikeshedding is a noun and it means..

  1. Futile investment of time and energy in discussion of marginal technical issues.

  2. Procrastination.

Known as Parkinson's law of triviality, it was formulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, a British Naval historian and author who formulated both Parkinson's Law of Triviality and Parkinson's Law.

Parkinson observed that a committee whose job is to approve plans for a nuclear power plant may spend the majority of its time on relatively unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bikeshed, while neglecting the design of the power plant itself, which is far more important but also far more difficult to criticize constructively.

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