“Don’t spend major time on minor things.”
Jim Rohn
According to Cyril Northcote Parkinson, The Law of Triviality describes a phenomenon where people spend a relatively large amount of time, energy, and other resources dealing with relatively minor issues.
Source: Effectiviology
Variations of the Law of Triviality
There are various different formulations for the underlying concept behind the law of triviality, including the following:
• “Organizations give disproportional weight to trivial issues.”
• “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum of money involved.”
• “The amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change.”
Furthermore, this underlying concept has also been used in related adages. One example of this is Sayer’s law, which is the adage that “in any dispute, the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.
Why People Focus on Trivial Issues
There are various reasons why people tend to focus on trivial issues, while neglecting more important ones. Common reasons for this are the following:
• The trivial issue represents a problem that is easier to understand and formulate an opinion about.
• The trivial issue requires less time, effort, or money in order to solve.
• The important issue would require them to take more responsibility for their decisions.
• They assume that the people responsible for the important issue must have done already their job and assessed it.
The most important caveat regarding the law of triviality is that it’s simply meant to serve as a general observation, rather than as an absolute truth. As such, there are certainly situations where both minor and major issues get the attention that they deserve, in proportion with their importance.
According to Coline de Silans
In 2018, Belgian Tech Company Barco collaborated with Circle Research to conduct a survey 3,000 white-collar workers interviewed in eight countries; only 44% said that the time they spent in meetings was useful. 26% of the respondents reported that meeting time was devoted to discussing topics unrelated to set objectives or making small talk. The survey concluded that an efficient meeting should last 21 minutes, whereas the average length is 48 minutes.
Additional Reading
The Art of Majoring in Minor Things: The Leadership Challenge by Jules Ciotta
Point of Reflection
“I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.”
Thoreau