99. Bikeshedding: Why The Simplest Tasks Can Keep You Stuck (A Behavioral Economics Foundations Episode)

Welcome to episode 99 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's Behavioral Economics Foundation's episode is about bike shedding. Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palme.

Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about bike shedding, also known as Parkinson's Law of triviality. There is definitely a reason I'm talking about this topic right now as it very much impacts us all at this time of extreme change during the coronavirus pandemic. This is part of a sequence series of sorts in covering concepts that are specifically relevant to our changing lives and many of us being sequestered at home and doing most everything virtually for some people for the very first time. In addition to episode 91 on how our brains are impacted during pandemics like coronavirus, I've also done episodes on normalcy bias and why our brains hate seeing ourselves on camera, along with tips on how to fix that. Links to each of those episodes and any other articles or past episodes I reference throughout this episode can be found within the show notes, which are right within the app you're listening to or@the brainybusiness.com 99. There you will also find your freebie worksheet on Bike Shedding to help you overcome this sneaky brain trick. In the spirit of moving to the most important thing on the to do list and overcoming this mental trick, let's jump right in and talk about bike shedding. As with most concepts you'll hear me talk about on this show, bike shedding is something we do all the time and really realize it's happening. The thing that makes this concept different from a lot of others is how much it's holding us all back all the time without our conscious consent. Here's what you can expect in this episode. I'm going to give you an explanation of what bike shedding is with some of the most common examples. And then I'm going to give you a list of questions that you can ask yourself and explaining why those particular questions matter, kind of the thought process behind them to help you shake things up and get out of that bike shedding mindset so you can actually be achieving goals moving forward. And again, those questions are lined up with the freebie worksheet so you should go ahead and download that if you haven't already@the brainybusiness.com 99 I've mentioned bike shedding a few times on the podcast before. I believe it was first introduced in episode 53 in the series of all the BIA when I talked about the Lazy Brain. And for those of you who have taken the Brainy Mindset course, we covered this in more detail in the lesson on all the biases. If you're a member of the Be Thoughtful Revolution, you can get access to that course free as well, and there are links with details on that in the show notes for anyone who would like to learn more. The term bike shedding was coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who came up with the term, and that's also why it's called Parkinson's Law of Triviality. Parkinson was a British naval historian and author with some very astute observations that led to this concept being defined. First, I want to talk about Parkinson's Law, which is slightly different than but very much related to bike shedding and the Law of Triviality. Parkinson's Law states that work will expand to fit the amount of time allocated to it. This explains why no matter what time you get up in the morning, you always tend to leave or get to work at the same for those of us who say we work great under a deadline, this law is a big reason for that. If you have all the time in the world to get something done, you'll procrastinate and get distracted and it'll take forever. When it's due in four hours, magically you can bust it out and complete the entire project. Episodes and articles are a great example of this in my business. In general, podcast episodes take me an average of 8 hours to research, write, and record. That doesn't include editing show notes, reviewing the episode, and things like that, as this is done by a separate entity, shout out to Pro Podcast Solutions. Some episodes take less time than that, but in general it was a pretty standard time frame for the better part of the first two years of the show. Now that the world of coronavirus has severely impacted my available time to work on episodes without the kids interrupting, magically, they take less time. Similarly, articles take less time to write, and other tasks can be done more quickly. When I have less time, the quality is still the same in many cases. And interestingly, my column articles have had less suggested edits from the editors now that I'm taking less time to write them, possibly because I'm forcing myself to work on smaller topics per post, or because of having over 40 of these done now, or due to the benefits of succumbing to Parkinson's Law or some combination of everything. The point is, much like a goldfish will grow to the size of its bowl, our tasks will take up as much time as we will allow them to take. This is why setting your own internal deadlines through things like time blocking, if that works for you, or using a time timer like I do, can make a big difference in productivity. I've linked to the episode on My favorite tools for organizing your brain, which was episode 83 and has quickly skyrocketed to the seventh most downloaded episode of the podcast, as well as my interview with Nir Eyal, author of Indistractable, for some more tips on being productive and conquering Parkinson's Law. Now how does this apply to Parkinson's Other Law of triviality and our concept of bike shedding? Building on the first law, Parkinson's Law of Triviality finds that people will waste time focusing on trivial details while ignoring the bigger, more important problems. And consequently those bigger and more important problems end up with less time to be dealt with than what they should have and it becomes a disproportionate problem. The term bike shedding comes from Parkinson's observation of a committee which had been put together to approve plans for a nucle power plant. What Parkinson observed was that the committee spent a disproportionate amount of time to details that were essentially trivial, specifically the materials for a bicycle storage shed, which meant they had much less time available to focus on the big project. What they were actually assembled to work on the design of the nuclear plant. When looking at this as an outside observer, it seems absolutely ridiculous. I mean, why would anyone do that? Why would you focus on the bike shed when you know that you're there for the plant? Your brain is likely laughing at their misfortune and thinking I would never do something so ridiculous. And yet your brain would be wrong because it does this constantly. You may call this being a perfectionist, and many of us ambitious folks struggle with this tendency. The thing is, for the most part, people are not suffering from perfectionism in every aspect and possible decision in their life and business. They tend to get hung up on really tiny details, details that don't matter so much in the long run. The question is, why do those things get so much of your attention? Why do they feel so important in the moment and like you can't move forward until they're dealt with? More often than not, this is because your brain is bike shedding and essentially avoiding a more important topic that's either related or unrelated that makes it seem scared or nervous. Let's say you want to rebrand your business or start a business and you're trying to find the perfect layout for your logo. You're looking at tons of options and trying to find the perfect shade of blue and considering what that means to the consumer and then comparing it all 57 different ways and asking for feedback that you don't really take into account and spiraling for weeks or months because you can't possibly launch the brand until this thing is figured out. That logo matters, you say it's the first thing people will see and it needs to be perfect before. Before you move on to the next thing on your list. You know, the business plan or other really important strategic initiatives to getting that business moving. Yes, logos matter. I've talked about branding on the show quite a bit and I've talked about color theory and those are all well and good, but when they are used as a procrastination tool to keep you stuck, they're not worth it. Guess what? You can change a logo. You can change colors and update websites and change copy. The consequences of picking the wrong shade of blue in your logo just aren't that big. And the mistake could be fixed relatively easily down the road if need be. But launch without a business plan or with a bad one you threw together at the last minute, that can cause you some serious problems and mean less revenue if you aren't charging enough, or if you haven't thought through how you're going to cross sell things, or how all the aspects of the business come together. Getting the business plan wrong could mean going under. And if you had to put money down, you're going to be losing an investment. Or if you quit your job for no reason, it's a big deal. It matters. And that makes it scary to the brain. Especially if you're needing to leave your current state of status quo to enter this new uncertain territory, which is the case more often than not. Your brain really hates that idea, so it'll make other things seem more important than they are to keep you dwelling on them and therefore stuck in the status quo it loves so much. Essentially, your subconscious brain is the ultimate narcissist. It has an inflated sense of self thinking itself to be superior to everyone else, including your own consciousness brain. It will charm its way into getting what it wants and use smoke and mirrors to make you think something is of the utmost importance. When in the long run, it's all a ruse. Overcoming bike shedding is sometimes a battle with yourself and your brain's natural tendencies. It takes conscious effort to say, no, that's not important right now. And you can only do that if you know your goals and take the time to prioritize. What matters. The master your mindset mini course, which is part of the brainy mindset course and the pricing course. It's free and it helps you specifically with that piece of narrowing down your goals. So do check that out. There's a link for you in the show notes. When you don't have a plan, your subconscious can run rampant and decide what it wants you to focus on, and its priorities don't always align with your conscious goals. There are so many examples of this in business and areas where overcoming bike shedding can help you to be more successful. Tackling Parkinson's Law of Triviality can help with time management, resource allocation, project management, project planning, and general direction for your work, business and life. Here are some specific examples of how this could appear in business. We've all done them to help you think about this in your own work. Maybe you've said things like I can't start my business until I decide on the perfect name. Or I can't write that article until I have the catchiest title. I can't pitch that outlet until I've got the perfect story. We can't sell a course until it's been created and perfected. There's no reason to actually start the website project until I find the perfect template. Let me scroll through these 85,000 options. If I want to be a thought leader, I need to be active on social media. Let me spend hours and hours on social seeing what everyone else is doing to perfect my plan. Or I would love to have a scheduling software to make it easier for people to book times with me. But until I research every single one in detail, I can't know the best option. And it's important to pick the perfect one. You get the idea, right? We all do these things. It's keeping us stuck. Here are the truths your subconscious doesn't want you to know. Having a good name for your business is important, but it isn't everything. When I first launched this business as a freelancer, it was just Melina Young Consulting. And when I got married I changed it to Melina Palmer Consulting and it stayed as that for a while until I came up with the name of Defying Gravity for brands that soar a name and a brand that I loved by the way, but I had to give it up when it didn't fit and it was time to launch the podcast. So I had to rebrand again and found what I think is now the perfect name and iteration for the company that I can keep in the long term of the brainy business. If I had waited until I knew exactly what would work or felt perfect, none of it would have happened. Getting started under a generic name meant I could test out what I wanted to do and what people would pay for and the name evolved over time. There are some really crazy names out there and a great product, service or idea can overcome a less than perfect name. It's most important to see what the fit is. Just get moving, get started and you can go back and revisit those things later. And actually I started my business without a website. I don't think I had a website in the first two to three years of being in business. It was all based on referrals and I had plenty of business keeping things moving along the way. So knowing that sometimes you just jump on in and move forward. Let's move on to the second point here, which was about not being able to write the article until you have the perfect title, or pitching the media outlet until you know exactly what they're wanting in extreme detail to make sure you're perfectly hitting the mark and this is just not gonna work in your favor. You will have some misses, sure, but you just have to start swinging for these things. Just try for things, follow up on things, reach out on things, do some research so you don't look ridiculous, but pick your top outlet or 10 and send some personalized pitches, find who's been writing or find the editor and connect with them on Twitter and just have a conversation and eventually you can pitch the concept. Knowing that titles are actually one of the last things to be completed for articles and books. It's not always this way, but more often than not this is the way it works. Getting those ideas out and testing titles later on is going to be more impactful for you and can help you get the thought out of your head and get moving. See if somebody's interested in the general concept. If you can explain it in a couple of sentences as to how it relates back to their outlet, why their readers are going to like it, and you can narrow in on the title later. You can also easily change a title when you know the content is good and it resonates. Say if you were writing articles for your blog or I went through recently and updated a bunch of the names of past episodes of the podcast to make them into a way that I felt was more compelling. And they've been getting a lot more clicks. You can also tweak the way you talk about it on social media. If you're stuck with a title like the ones I write for INC Magazine, once the title is published, that that's the title, you know, kind of stuck with those. But I can talk about it differently in the way that I share it. Encouraging someone to go and click and read, but knowing that if I had waited until I knew exactly what INC was looking for and that they wanted someone to be posting on behavioral economics before I pitched them on it, it never would have happened and or, you know, somebody else would have gotten that opportunity. So putting yourself out there, getting over that bike shedding is really important in taking advantage of opportunities that you know exist yet it's the same with courses. You don't want to perfect a course and spend hours and days of your time agonizing over it when you don't know if people actually want it. Sometimes it's best to come up with an idea and a brief outline for a course or two and pre sell them to see if anybody buys. And if they do, then you can create it. When you know it's going to be a winner and you've already gotten some money in from it, it helps to motivate you to work work as well and creates those deadlines to help you overcome Parkinson's first law and avoid your bike shedding tendencies of dwelling over the perfect content. It's the same with websites. If you're using something with a template, those are usually set up to easily transfer between layouts. I've done a lot of work with websites and other layouts over the years for advertisements and billboards and all sorts of things. Things and just almost 100% of the time, every business person struggles with the concept of coming up with the content first and the design later. This is a fundamental point of conflict between someone asking for a layout and the designer who's creating that layout. I'm pretty sure every designer I have ever worked with has said something along the lines of give me the content and I'll give you a layout. And every person who wants the layout will say show me a mockup and I'll write the content. To fit feels counterintuitive, but in business you gotta write the content first, come up with the plan and write it all out with the least amount of words possible and your designer can come up with something great to fit that content. They can then ask for edits if needed. But tackling the bigger problem of the content is more important than the perfect template. Similarly, on the example of the scheduling software or scrolling through social media as research for hours on end, it's procrastination to keep from doing the hard and scary stuff. And this highlights the worst part about bike shedding. Because it's your own brain putting up the smokescreen, the thing you're productively procrastinating with will feel like it's the most important thing in the world. You don't feel like you're doing any wrong. It feels like you're doing the best possible thing to invest in yourself and your business. Your subconscious is going to ensure you believe that lie to meet its own needs. If you don't stop and say is this helping me reach my goal? Or maybe is this really important in the long run, it could hold you up for much longer than is valuable for you. And essentially you're building a bike shed instead of focusing on the nuclear plant, something that from a distance you can see looks ridiculous if someone else was doing doing that in their business. But when it's you, you just believe with every fiber of your being that you're doing the right thing because it's your subconscious telling you it's important. And if you don't stop and question it, you're just never going to naturally get there. It's really difficult to do if you're not intentionally moving past that bike shedding. So with that in mind, there are a few ways to look at whatever thing you're stressing over and overcome your your bike shedding problem. Here are some questions to consider, which are outlined on that freebie worksheet I've created for you, which you can find in the show notes at the brainy business.com 99 first question Will I even remember this five years from now? This could also be pulled back to a much shorter time frame depending on the problem at hand. Maybe it's just if this is going to matter five days from now. In many cases when you are bike shedding, you moved on to a new small problem to agonize over once you finish with this one. If you remember from earlier in the episode I had said that the bike shedding, the small thing you're dwelling on, might be completely unrelated to the goal that you're trying to avoid, that your subconscious is trying to keep you distracted from. So you're very likely going to move from small problem to small problem to small problem to small problem and and never get to that goal. When bike shedding is really at the root of what you're doing, avoiding that bigger goal and keeping that status quo means there's just always going to be something to dwell on. So if you don't have goals that you're prioritizing toward, that you can recenter on, and I'll get to that in one of these future questions here in just a second, then it just you're never going to get out of that vicious cycle. The next question is looking at the impact A question for this could be what's the consequence if I get it wrong? This means if you pick the wrong shade of blue for your logo, or buy the brown shoes instead of the black ones, or donate a sweater when you're downsizing, or move forward with a certain scheduling software or website template, or pitch the media outlet or all the other things in the world, what happens if you made the wrong choice? What's the worst possible outcome of the choice? And realistic worst case scenarios here only no saying that the butterfly effect could make it so. Your choice of the wrong blue causes a tsunami on the other side of the world. Think truly. If you pick a blue and end up hating it, can you change it? If you find out that you wish you had black shoes instead of brown ones, can you return the ones you bought? Or do you know it's a lesson learned and you get to go shoe shopping again? If you get rid of the sweater and wish you still had it, or another purple sweater, can you find a replacement? If you pick a template or scheduling software and hate it, you learn something and you can move on. If you pitch the media outlet and get rejected or don't hear back, which happens a lot even with really great pitches, you got some practice and maybe learn something for the next one. If the real consequence is big, then it's worth spending more time on. If it's essentially inconsequential, it's likely bike shedding and better to make a decision and move on. This is where done is better than perfect kicks in. You gotta move forward to keep from going backwards. And I used to tell my designers this all the time, that you could sit and nitpick and fiddle and keep going tiny, tiny tweaks until it's perfect. But it will never be perfect. You'll never be happy with that thing you're designing, the thing you're working on, because it's just about trying to reach that tiny bit better. That's not going to give you the big payout in the long run. So the next question you can ask is going to be getting back to your goals, which you will have already narrowed down using your master your mindset mini course at this point. So you know your three goals and you can say is this decision helping me reach my goals or keeping me from them? This is where really narrow goals and tactics underneath those goals are important. Finding out if dwelling on this decision will really help you better achieve the goal at hand, or if it's just keeping you in status quo for longer is important. And in moving forward, getting back to something Nir Eyal talks about in his book Indistractable, which I've already referenced once in the episode and as I said is linked for you. The episode of my interview with him is linked in the show notes here for this episode. The opposite of distraction is traction and until you know what you're working toward, you don't really know what is a distraction from that goal and what is actually going to be be helping you to move forward. So narrowing those goals, knowing what's important is necessary to understand if it's a distraction or traction. If it's bike shedding or it's dwelling on the right problems. Having an accountability buddy that you trust can be really helpful in this case and why it is important to get out of your own head. Sometimes you might need someone else to shine light on something to see how how silly it really is. Like where we can objectively look at the bike shed and the nuclear plant problem and see that it's ridiculous, but when it's our own small problem we can't really see it. However, there is a very serious caveat to this point. You want to be in whatever this is for you and don't ask a ton of people for their advice on every little problem that you have. You of course have other people in your life who are impacted by the decisions you you make. It's important to consider those people in the ways they're going to be impacted. And sometimes you need to make joint decisions with people, whether they're work decisions and you need to consider other departments, bosses or employees, or personal life decisions where you need to consider your significant other or friends or family members. However, many people who get sucked into bike shedding are too worried about what other people think and are trying to please others with their decisions instead of doing what would make them happy or help them achieve their own goals. And again, this is because your subconscious knows that it's going to help you spiral and stay stuck. So if the debate in your mind is what will Susie say if she finds out I chose X or I know Matt wants me to get Y so I should probably do that then. Your bike shedding may be telling you something important and that is to listen to you, what you want, what will make you happy and what will help you reach your goals. Other people are important and I'm not giving blanket advice to ignore everyone and stomp all over their needs. But what I am saying is that you are the only constant in your life. What makes you happy and feeling fulfilled is central to you and you just shouldn't make all your effort be about other people's opinions. Your job can change, your life status can change, your relationships can change. And knowing like I said, you're the only thing that's constant in your life. And I am someone who has made a lot of changes. I've been divorced, I've left a really great job to start a business. I have launched into a master's program and and graduated from that obviously and then changed direction in my business multiple times and I've moved around. There's a lot that goes into kind of knowing what is central to you and understanding your own goals and kind of overcoming this. I've been there. I don't need to dig into that here on the podcast, but if you had questions or advice on some of that, obviously you can reach out to me. Send me an email. Melinathebrainybusiness.com but as it turns out, people are more likely to give their opinion and make it seem like they really care and know a lot about things that are essentially bike shedding. When you say that you're considering switching laundry soap and your best friend or mom or sister or co worker gives you a big lecture about why that's a terrible decision. Or if you say you want to start a keto diet or train for a marathon and someone tells you why they that's a stupid idea and then goes on about how bad it would be and why you shouldn't. That is about their bike shedding more than it's about your happiness. Your brain preference to focus on trivial stuff instead of big stuff is not limited to your own trivial problems. It can also easily and happily consume itself with everyone else's trivial junk and want to make all those things into a big deal when they really aren't. And of course everyone else's brain is doing the same thing, which is compelling them to weigh in on your small choice and make it seem like a big deal so they have something to distract them from whatever big decision their subconscious is avoiding. And now I want to put out my disclaimer. None of those people are bad and if you have a tendency to make a big deal out of other people's problems, you aren't bad either. We are wired to do this, but we can also stop it and be much happier with just a little bit of effort. The lesson here is not to ask for other people's input if it's a bike shedding problem or if their opinion will not coincide well with your goals and happiness. If you know you want to quit your job and start a business business, don't ask people in your life who think entrepreneurship is dumb what their opinion is. If you want to try a keto diet and are really excited about it, what do you benefit from asking your carb loving friends for their input? Get balanced feedback, but also consider Do I feel the need to ask this question because my subconscious wants to put it off and knows that this person's feedback will keep me stuck and spinning? If the answer is yes, don't ask and know that that is okay. So here is where we end up. Bike shedding is an ongoing problem, which makes it so your brain wants to focus on little inconsequential details, and it's very good at tricking you into thinking they are way more important than they are. So you never have the time to tackle the big steps that would move you forward toward your goals and shift the status quo that your subconscious loves so much. And even if you adamantly feel something matters and can't imagine not taking a very long time to evaluate it, it doesn't mean it's actually of consequence in the grand scheme of things. And right now in our environment where our brains are kind of on overdrive from all the change and things going on, we have a lot of small stuff that we can be getting our stress out on and thinking about and really bike shedding all these areas of our life when it feels like you're able to focus on that thing because there's a lot of other scary stuff in the changes that are around us. So your brain is going to be really prone to bike shedding right now if you're not careful. So getting really good at challenging your own norms and points of dwelling is important to overcoming bike shedding and work on the things that really matter. Ask those questions outlined in the episode, which are also written out for you on your freebie worksheet, and just take time to stop and take a step back. Simply saying is this, my bike shed could be enough and you'll get better at this over time. You'll never be completely free of bike shedding. Remember Parkinson's First Law that things take up as much room as you allow them to occupy, so you're still going to procrastinate from time to time. It happens. And do forgive yourself for that, knowing it's part of all of our natures. But when it really matters, when there are goals on the line and dreams to be living, and knowing that bike shedding just creates a stressful, unpleasant experience that you don't even have to live in, there really isn't an upside to living in that space. Bike shedding makes you feel worse and you don't achieve your goals. To put it another way, the juice definitely isn't worth the squeeze. To take that analogy a step further, it's like having your favorite beverage in the fridge that you could drink at any time and we'll say it's inconsequential. Maybe it's a magic elixir that you also love the taste of and instead of choosing to just drink the glass of beverage that you already have that you know you love, you decide to go out and pick a bushel limes and then take hours to painstakingly chop and squeeze them so you can drink straight lime juice with no sugar that you hate just to prove your subconscious brain's point. It takes a little training, but very quickly the juice you get from the tiny bit of effort to stop bike shedding will be totally worth its squeeze. I promise you're going to be happy with the outcome if you focus on this this and make those simple tweaks. Ask yourself those questions which are on that freebie worksheet in the show notes for this episode, as well as links to a bunch of other content. If you want to learn more about bike shedding and it's all@the brainybusiness.com 99 thank you for listening and for celebrating in these milestones both of the last of the double digit episodes and in my birthday tomorrow. I appreciate you and thank you for connecting and listening for the last 99 episodes of the Brainy Business podcast. Many more to come, I promise. And just like that, episode 99 on bike shedding and the last of the double digit episodes is done. Next week is episode 100. I can hardly believe it's been 100 episodes already and I have some exciting, exciting things planned for that one, so please do plan to join me for that. It's going to be a lot of fun. You won't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me, and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.