Cyril Parkinson identified two major “laws” of productivity that often sabotage our success. The first is the Law of Triviality (The Bike Shed Effect): people tend to fixate on minor, subjective details they understand while ignoring massive, complex issues they don’t. Like a committee spending hours debating a bike shed’s color instead of a nuclear plant’s safety, we use triviality as a placebo for real work.
The second is simply Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. If you give yourself a week to finish an hour-long task, you will find ways to make it complex enough to take the whole week. To beat this, set aggressive, artificial deadlines. This forces you to ignore the “trivialities” and focus only on the crucial elements needed to finish the job. Give yourself less time, and you’ll get more done.