(noun) The principle that members of an organization give disproportionate weight to trivial issues compared to complex, consequential matters.

The board spent two hours debating the color of the company newsletter header while approving the merger proposal in twelve minutes.

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality states that the time spent on any item of agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum of money involved. Formulated by historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson in 1957, the law emerged from his observation of committee behavior regarding a nuclear reactor, bicycle shed, and coffee budget. The nuclear reactor received minimal discussion due to its technical complexity, while the bicycle shed and coffee provisions generated extensive debate because everyone felt qualified to contribute opinions on these familiar topics.

This phenomenon manifests in various specialized forms, including bikeshedding as a general term and Wadler’s Law in programming language design contexts.

Examples:

• Municipal councils that briefly approve infrastructure bonds but extensively debate park bench designs
• Corporate boards that quickly ratify acquisition strategies while deliberating extensively over employee handbook formatting
• Academic committees that spend minimal time on curriculum changes but debate office space allocation for hours
• Software teams that rapidly approve architectural decisions but argue extensively about code formatting standards