Time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to its importance.
Wadler's law is about programming language design committees, where syntax absorbs the time that semantics needed. It is Parkinson's bicycle shed in a specific setting.
In practice
- A style guide committee settles the referencing question in a morning and spends three meetings on the serial comma.
- A board that approves the acquisition in ten minutes and debates the press release for an hour is Parkinson's bicycle shed in a different room.