Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Isn't bike-shedding when other people block you with low-effort critisism.

""" Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in endless discussions.

Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his books.

A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here. """

https://bikeshed.com/

Yak-shaving comes to mind, but that is more when you have a large boring project you have to get through first in order to get to the interesting parts.




Analysis paralysis.

It's not usually icons for me. It's some really repetitive part of the project that puts me off, and I figure out some way to code around it, but doing so is not rewarding enough, or I hit some dopamine threshold where I've 'solved' the problem enough that I'm satisfied with the mental exercise alone.


Bike shedding in Parkinson's description is paradoxically putting more thought on things that are easy to comprehend than things that are hard to grasp.

Yak shaving is having to do something seemingly unrelated to your project before you can make progress on more evidently related issues.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: