What’s Your Next Most Immediate Constraint?
Close the Gap P.3 Ch.1
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One of solopreneurs’ biggest mistakes is trying to do everything at once. When you focus on too many tasks, spread your attention thin, or tackle problems incorrectly, you waste time, energy, and resources.
The key to accelerating your progress isn’t to do more but focus on what’s preventing you from moving forward. This is how you collapse time to target: by identifying and addressing the most immediate constraint.
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The Force Multiplier Question
The process begins by asking yourself an important question: “What am I optimizing for?” Ultimately, you’re optimizing to achieve your priority, but the key to collapsing time is knowing where to direct your efforts at any given moment.1
Here’s how to refine that focus. Ask yourself, “What’s the step before the step?”
In other words, what’s the next most immediate limitation or constraint you need to address? What’s the next problem you need to solve? What’s the most pressing challenge you must resolve before anything else can move forward?
This step-before-the-step thinking shifts your focus from attempting to do everything at once to targeting the one thing that will move you forward fastest.
The Kinky Hose & Leaky Bucket Analogy
Let’s break this down further with an analogy. Imagine trying to fill a bucket with a hose, but the hose is kinked, and the water is barely trickling through. Your goal is to fill the bucket (your objective), but as long as the hose is kinked (your constraints), you won’t be able to make any real progress, no matter how much water pressure you apply.
The problem is not the water pressure (your effort) but the kinks in the hose (the constraints that prevent progress).
Before unking the hose, you must ensure the bucket is leak-free. After all, it’s no good fixing the hose if the bucket is leaking all your resources (time, money, attention, and energy).
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Once you’ve checked for leaks, your next step is to unkink the hose—but you don’t do this randomly. You turn on the water just enough to identify the first kink. This approach ensures that you’re addressing the most immediate constraint, solving the problem blocking progress right now, and then moving on to the next kink.
By tackling constraints in sequential order, you achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness without wasting effort on problems that aren’t the root cause of your delays.
Asking Better Questions
How exactly do you identify your most immediate constraint? The answer lies in asking better questions. Before diving into problem-solving mode, ensure you have enough clarity about your destination, where you’re starting from, and what you have to work with. Once you have this foundation, identifying the next constraint becomes a matter of focused inquiry.2
Here are four questions that will help you find and identify your most immediate constraint: