Key takeaways

• Bikeshedding is the tendency we have to spend excessive time on trivial matters in meetings, often glossing over important ones.
• Bikeshedding is damaging because it wastes very valuable time and, more importantly, leads to insufficient discussion of important issues.
• To avoid bikeshedding, set a clear purpose for all meetings (and eliminate conversations about other issues), only invite necessary people, appoint a decision maker and have the decision maker set clear parameters for the meeting.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://lloydmelnick.com/2020/06/17/how-to-avoid-meetings-about-the-trivial-aka-bikeshedding/