Why We Spend So Much Time at Work on Things that Don’t Matter
We focus on trivia at the expense of more important issues. Why does this happen and what we can do about it?
I once sat in a meeting and watched four of the most talented people I’ve ever worked with argue fiercely about a comma on slide 4. Said comma, my teammate declared, would imply a pause that would make our sentence clearer. But, another teammate swiftly countered, a pause could just as easily sap the sentence of its momentum, thereby diminishing its potential to deliver the maximal effect to the reader.
Around and around we went: for 10 minutes, then 15, then 20, until the meeting was nearly over and I realized this was the meeting.
I remember being confused. The kind of confused where you attempt, with quiet desperation, to make eye contact with someone else in the room to confirm that yes, this is happening and no, you are not losing your grip on reality. I was newer to the team, but I couldn’t see how our comma placement would matter much. Maybe our stakeholders were really into grammar?
This meeting has stayed with me, and ever since I’ve wondered why teams and organizations spend so much time and energy on trivial problems. The answer has to do with something called bike-shedding.
