Pro-innovation and Triviality Bias

Whilst lessons in this course have discussed the benefits of the compounding effect, of consistency and doing what you know you need to do, when people get stuck, they are often stuck because they are doing the wrong things, or things that don’t really matter.

If you’re busy, working really hard, and you’re exhausted at the end of every day, but at times you’ve felt like you’re getting nowhere, this lesson is for you.

Two of the biggest culprits here are Triviality Bias and its partner in crime, Pro-Innovation Bias. Together, they’re responsible for more wasted effort than almost anything else I see. People come to me exhausted, burned out, wondering why nothing’s changing despite all their hard work.

The answers are usually simple. They’ve been working incredibly hard on things that don’t matter!

Triviality Bias

Let’s first discuss Triviality Bias, and there are a few things you really need to pay attention to here. I’m a firm believer that small things can make a difference in your life, and doing small things well every day leads to big wins. I’ve seen it happen countless times. But I’m also aware that trivial things don’t make any difference at all. There’s a crucial distinction here that most people miss completely.

Small things are small but important. Trivial things are not important at all. The problem is we give significance to insignificance. We spend time giving importance to what’s not important, and thus we waste our time and effort on things that will never make any difference at all in our lives or work. This is the effect of Triviality Bias — an overemphasis on the trivial and the things that don’t matter, and it’s close to what the management theorist C. Northcote Parkinson called the law of triviality: his observation that groups spend disproportionate time on minor matters while the big decisions get waved through.

What you need to do is understand the difference between small things that make a difference and trivial things that don’t. Just like we can get the aggregation of marginal gains where small improvements and small differences can compound to make things happen, we can get the reverse with triviality. I call this the aggregation of trivial efforts, where the effect of doing lots of unproductive things compounds to a lot of effort doing nothing at all.

Think about it. You spend an hour reorganising your desk. You spend another hour colour-coding your files. You spend half the afternoon researching the perfect productivity app. By the end of the day, you’ve done nothing that actually moves you forward. You’ve been incredibly busy, but you’ve achieved precisely nothing of value. That’s the aggregation of trivial efforts in action.

We live in a world full of technology, a world of hype, and the constant promise of something better or an instant reward delivered by a few clicks on your phone, your laptop, or the result of some amazing new software you need to purchase. It’s easy to get stuck doing trivial things that feel productive but aren’t. The time taken to plough through your inbox twice a day might feel necessary, but is it really? Or are you just responding to things that don’t matter while ignoring the things that do?

Pro-Innovation Bias

This brings us nicely to Pro-Innovation Bias. Pro-Innovation Bias is the bias that makes us think that something new is going to be better than what we’ve already got. We’re drawn to novelty like moths to a flame. We want to believe that there’s a smart new way to make our lives easier, or there’s a technological solution to an age-old problem. There usually isn’t. The term comes from the sociologist Everett Rogers, who used it for the assumption, built into a lot of research on new ideas, that an innovation should be adopted by everyone and adopted quickly. The everyday version of the bias — the one that has you eyeing a new app instead of doing the work — is really just that same assumption let loose on daily life.

New is not always better. It just feels like it is. A lot of new things are trivial to what you really need to do or to your core business. The first thing politicians tell us at every change of government or leadership is about their new plan, restructuring, or way forward. We’re drawn to this rhetoric by Pro-Innovation Bias, when in reality most of what we do remains exactly the same. New packaging, same old problems.

Having the newest phone doesn’t mean you’ll make the calls you need to make. Having a spanking-new laptop doesn’t mean you’ll be able to write more. You’ve probably already got the skills and the tools you need. Let innovation give you better tools to work with, but don’t fall into the Pro-Innovation Trap, where you think that something new is going to solve all your problems. It won’t. Your problems usually involve effort and consistency, and not having the latest gadget.

I see this all the time in my practice. Someone comes in with the latest fitness tracker, the newest meal planning app, and the most expensive gym membership they could find. They’re convinced that this time it’ll be different because they’ve got all this new stuff. Six months later, they’re back where they started, wondering why it didn’t work. It didn’t work because the new stuff was never the problem. The problem was always about actually doing the work, not about having better tools to avoid it.

Breaking Free of Both Biases

With new technology, we can get trapped in triviality more quickly than ever. That new software you spent all your money on isn’t going to get you new customers or make the business calls for you. Hard work, time, and effort almost always trump the cards of those looking for a quick win. Always have, always will. There’s no app that replaces consistency. No software substitutes for showing up every day and doing what needs to be done.

The danger is that Pro-Innovation Bias makes triviality feel productive. You’re doing something new, you’re trying something different, you’re being proactive. Except you’re not. You’re just distracting yourself with shiny new things while avoiding the hard, boring work that would actually make a difference. It’s procrastination dressed up as progress.

Remember, trivial efforts are wasted efforts. Often, the promise of something new hides the fact that under all of that hype and promotion, you still need to roll up your sleeves and get the job done. The job hasn’t changed. The work hasn’t changed. Only your excuse for not doing it has changed. Now, instead of saying you don’t have time, you’re saying you don’t have the right tools. It’s the same avoidance in a different package.

Pro-Innovation can lead you to doing trivial things, and you don’t realise it’s happening because you’re caught up in the novelty. The excitement of something new blinds you to the fact that you’re wasting time and energy on things that don’t matter. You feel like you’re making progress because you’re busy, because you’re learning something new, because you’re staying current. But you’re not making progress. You’re just busy being busy.

Often, doing the trivial is an excuse to avoid doing the hard work. Often, we’re drawn to searching for something new for the same reasons. It’s easier to buy a new productivity system than it is actually to be productive. It’s easier to research new approaches than it is to implement the approach you already know works. It’s easier to convince yourself you need better tools than it is to use the tools you’ve already got.

Don’t do the things that don’t matter. Don’t look for new innovative ways to waste your time and money. Remember, there’s a difference between the small stuff and the trivial, and Pro-Innovation Bias can lead you down a trivial path hidden by the surrounding hype. The question you need to ask yourself every single time you’re tempted by something new is this: will this actually move me forward, or am I just avoiding the real work?

Most of the time, if you’re honest with yourself, you already know the answer. You know what you need to do. You know what works. You’ve always known. You just don’t want to do it because it’s hard and boring and takes time. So instead, you convince yourself that what you really need is something new, something better, something that will make it easier. You don’t. You need to do the work you’ve been avoiding.

The aggregation of marginal gains works. The compounding effect of small, important actions over time creates massive results. But the aggregation of trivial efforts works too. It compounds in the opposite direction. All those hours spent on things that don’t matter add up to nothing. Worse than nothing, actually. They add up to exhaustion without progress, effort without results, and the crushing realisation that you’ve been working incredibly hard to stay exactly where you are.

Further reading

• Parkinson, C. N. (1957). Parkinson’s Law, and Other Studies in Administration.
• Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed.).
• Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.
• Duhigg, C. (2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.
• Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.