Welcome to the Daily Quote – I'm Andrew McGivern.Today's quote comes from C. Northcote Parkinson, a British Naval historian who studied how organizations work.In his 1957 book "Parkinson's Law," he described what he called the Law of Triviality:"The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved."
What does that mean? Inverse proportion?Basically... the less important something is, the more time we spend on it.Parkinson illustrated this with a brilliant example: a committee approving plans for a nuclear power plant spent most of their time debating what materials to use for the staff bicycle shed, while barely discussing the actual nuclear reactor.Why? Because everyone understood bike sheds. Everyone could have an opinion. Everyone felt qualified to contribute.But the nuclear reactor? Too complex. Too intimidating. So they approved it quickly and moved on.This happens everywhere. In business. In your personal life. Right now.You'll spend hours deciding which CRM Sales software to use but only fifteen minutes making sales calls.You'll spend days researching the perfect desk chair but won't spend an afternoon planning your career trajectory.You'll obsess over small decisions where everyone has an opinion while the mission-critical tasks that require deep thinking get ignored.The bike shed is easy to understand. The nuclear reactor is hard. So we waste time on bike sheds while the reactor gets built without proper scrutiny.So here's the question: What's your bike shed right now? What trivial activity are you spending time on while the hard, important work goes untouched?Because the Law of Triviality isn't just about committees. It's about you. Today.Stop debating the bike shed. Go build the reactor.That's it for today. I'm Andrew McGivern – I'll see you in the next one with another Daily Quote.