42 Laws You Should Know (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this series, we looked at seven laws worth knowing.
These aren’t laws in a legal sense.
Instead, they are explanations for the way humans and things generally behave.
Highlights from the first list include:
Brooks’s Law which explains why adding more people to a project typically slows it down rather than speeds it up.
The Law of Unintended Consequences which explains how applying simple solutions to complex problems often worsens the situation worse.
Parkinson’s Law which explains why work always expands to fill the time available. In other words, you will always leave it to the last minute to get something done.
Finally, you have terms to explain patterns of behaviour you’ve observed countless times.
And, if you’ve read this far, you’re presumably interested in learning more.
Good news - we’re back with another seven laws worth knowing, covering topics including procrastination, data, subject-matter experts, and the best way to ask questions on the internet.
Read on to learn more.
1. Emmett’s Law
The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing it.
Face it, like all humans, you procrastinate.
You could be filing your tax return, but binge-watching Netflix is way more appealing.
The truth is, you’re nearly always better off biting the bullet and doing the damn thing straightaway.
This is because the time you spend putting something off can add up to more than if you’d just done the task in the first place.
Or, as Rita Emmett, the author of The Procrastinator’s Handbook, put it, ‘The dread of doing a task uses up more time and energy than doing the task.’
2. Twyman’s Law
The more surprising the data, the more likely it is wrong.
Data is everywhere, and it’s easy to be fooled by it.
As a storytelling animal, it’s in your DNA to look for patterns that don’t exist, which can get you in trouble.
Therefore, you need to be wary of taking any data at face value or, as Twyman’s law asserts, ‘The more unusual or interesting the data, the more likely they are to have been the result of an error of one kind or another’.
Why?
For the simple reason that errors and data manipulation are far more common than genuinely surprising results.
As a rule of thumb, the more boring the data, the more likely it’s trustworthy.
3. Gibson's Law
Every subject matter expert has an opposite equivalent.
Anyone can find a subject-matter expert who supports their view when it comes to expert testimony.
Or, as Gibson’s law states, ‘For every PhD, there is an equal and opposite PhD.’
The reason is that experts can be wrong but still convincing.
And convincing the jury is all that matters in the courtroom!
4. Cunningham's Law
To get the correct answer on the internet, post the wrong answer.
You need a thick skin to put your ideas out on the web.
The online mob are more interested in cutting people down than building them up.
So it’s no wonder there are so many anonymous social media profiles.
Hence the counterintuitive ‘Cunningham’s law’ about asking questions on the internet.
Named after Ward Cunningham, the inventor of wiki software, it states, ‘The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.’
Sad but nearly always true.
5. Hoare’s Law (of Large Problems)
Every large problem is hiding a smaller problem.
Problems come in all shapes and sizes.
Some are small, some not so small.
A big problem is basically made up of smaller problems.
Therefore, the trick to solving big problems is to find a small problem at the heart of your big problem and solve it.
Or, as the Oxford professor C.A.R. Hoare put it, ‘Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.’
6. Gall's Law
A complex system that works invariably evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.
According to Wikipedia, ‘systems thinking’ is ‘a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts.’
Complexity is everywhere, so understanding more about how complex systems behave is time well spent.
John Gall was an American author and retired paediatrician who wrote the book Systemantics: an essay on how systems work, and especially how they fail.
A critique of systems theory, it’s most famous for coining Gall’s Law which states that ‘A complex system that works invariably evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.’
7. Parkinson’s Law of Triviality
People in organisations typically give disproportionate weight to trivial issues.
The naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson returns with another brilliant observation about organisational behaviour.
In his 1957 argument, he gives the fictional example of a committee in charge of building a nuclear power station.
Instead of focusing on the important aspects of the plant's design, they use their time to discuss matters of little importance, such as which materials to use to build the bike shed.
Or, as Parkinson himself put it, ‘The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum [of money] involved.’
Unsurprisingly, this is where the term bike-shed effect originated.
No doubt you’ve experienced similar behaviour in your own organisation!
