Saying, proverb, phrase for the idea of Absurdity of concentrating on pointless, over-the-top pleasantries than subject that matters the most [duplicate]
I'm looking for an idiom or saying that I could use when people are focusing too much on small details and not seeing the big picture.
A couple that come to mind are "being penny-wise and pound foolish" and "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic". However, the former doesn't fit what I'm thinking of because the present activity might not be wise. The latter implies too much about impending doom.
For example, let's say some company is spending all their time refining a small detail in their product, while ignoring a major opportunity shift in the industry. What phrase could I use there?
Expending disproportionate effort on trivial matters is sometimes known as bikeshedding, or Parkinson’s Law of Triviality.
Jeff blogged about the phenomenon in the context of it being a problem on Stack Overflow...
cannot see the forest for the trees
fail to grasp the main issue because of overattention to details.
NOAD
One word I've seen used is nitpicking.
Majoring on the minors
carries the idea of the effort going to waste, without the implication that there is a problem with perception. Also, my personal favorite,
chasing rabbits
means going off on tangents, but is less formal and not as well-defined...someone might consider it a Jefferson Airplane reference :).
Some suggestions:
- Can't see the wood for the trees
- Has their priorities wrong
- Focusing on the trivial
- Wasting time on the trivial