The Law Of Triviality or “Bikeshedding” was in full effect at work today.

I had permission to put a message on a system about upcoming changes. When it went live, a bunch of more senior staff thought my message was not quite right and levied their opinions on what should replace it. Eventually, after everyone had spoken, no one could decide on precisely what the message should say and they all just stopped talking about it without making a decision.

🤫 The original message I wrote still remains on the system 🤭🤷‍♂️

An old friend of mine who very recently passed away,1 once told me

“The rarest technical skill you can cultivate is common sense. And it’s often in short supply”

I think there is a lot of truth to that. People tend to chase flash or want to get involved in whatever the zeitgeist of the day is vs just slogging away at the fundamental bricks that complete projects. We’re easily distracted, turned and moved away from what we were doing not just 30 minutes ago. It’s part of the modern workplace with email, Teams/Slack…distractions can be everywhere… If you want them or not!

I’m often not the smartest technical asset in the room, but what I can do is make a structured list, update it and follow through on it.

If I can’t follow through I communicate why and I ask for help and advice. I send updates update calmly, descriptively and consistently. I feel like these fundamentals are key to collaboration and moving things forwards, but they can very often get lost in the storm for want of the thrill of starting another new project, looking at the shiny new thing or indeed bikeshedding over a two sentence paragraph for 30 minutes in what should be a 5 minute decision.

My wife jokingly refers to how we tackle work as being plodders. We’re At the coal face consistently smashing away and making the pile smaller whilst sometimes someone whifts past and may tell us they think we’re holding our picks wrong before they vanish again to the fresh air outside of the mine.

Someone this week came up to me whilst I was working and told me they were grateful for some work I’d done on a project and felt like I had kept them informed of what was happening and why throughout. At the end of the day, I think that’s what keeps me doing what I do. Providing that measurable consistent delivery that makes a difference to….someone out there.

So I’ll just keep plodding. I hope you keep plodding too.

  1. Hence I’ve been thinking of them often over the past few days. I never did get to tell you how grateful I was for all your help when I was a stupid young thing. Rest in peace Brett. ↩︎