Been reading more of "The Goal" and Goldratt just called me out hard.
The main character Alex Rogo is managing this failing plant, and his mentor Jonah pointed out that trying to run every machine and worker at 100% efficiency is actually what's killing the factory's performance.
This is the idea behind the Theory of Constraints.
The idea that every system has a bottleneck, and that bottleneck determines the speed of the entire process.
So, running everything else at maximum capacity just creates piles of work-in-progress that can't move through the bottleneck (because the bottleneck can’t handle the same amount of things that the other machines can handle)
That's literally me right now.
I've been trying to fill every hour of my day.
Take on every project.
Respond to every lead immediately.
Work on multiple client deliverables at once.
Running my entire "operation" at 100%.
Result?
Everything takes longer.
I'm constantly switching between tasks and losing focus.
Projects that should take 3 days are taking 1 week.
I'm running at 100% capacity and delivering at like 30% efficiency.
Here's what I'm changing:
Instead of taking 5 projects and juggling them all, I'm taking 3 (high paying ones) and finishing them fast.
Instead of responding to every lead the same day, I'm batching all my sales calls to Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Instead of trying to be available 24/7, I'm working in focused blocks where nobody can interrupt me.
Turns out my bottleneck isn't my skills or my tools.
It's me trying to optimize every single task instead of optimizing the whole system.
Less work in progress = faster completion = happier clients = more money.
Who knew working less could actually make you more productive?
Anyone else guilty of the "local optima" trap?