When I get stuck on something, I have this bad habit of thinking that I can just keep doing more and pushing harder to brute force my way through it.
It’s the kind of “solution” that keeps you moving at 100 miles an hour (which feels productive), but ends up getting you nowhere. Like commuting by treadmill.
Sometimes the answer really is more. But if you keep doing more and more, only to get the same result, I think there’s a word for that.
What always helps me get off that treadmill is forcing myself to look at the problem from a different angle.
The angle that’s helped me most lately is focusing on my constraints instead of my effort.
This idea comes from the “Theory of Constraints” in the novel The Goal.
Basically, you’re only as strong as your weakest link.
Most of us didn’t end up entrepreneurs because we’re lazy. Quite the opposite. We’re willing to Kool-Aid Man through a brick wall if we need to.
So it’s unlikely that effort is the real problem.
But no amount of effort will outweigh a legitimate constraint the business has. Running faster on the treadmill won’t get you any further. But remove the treadmill, and suddenly we’re getting somewhere.
So instead of asking “what else can I do?” I started asking “what’s in my way?”
My ego is the only thing that wants to prove how much effort I’m willing to give. But its all pointless if that effort is wasted.
