This One Thing Makes Personal Growth 25% Faster

The renowned German artist Hans Hofmann once said, “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

Today, I’m going to show you a theory, some call it a law, introduced by author Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt—The Law of Constraints.

In 1940, with Nazi forces bearing down on France, Winston Churchill faced what seemed like an impossible situation.

The British Army was trapped at Dunkirk, cut off from retreat. The war could have ended then and there—Britain’s defeat sealed. But Churchill knew the power of focus in moments of crisis. Rather than trying to fight the war on every front, he zeroed in on a single objective: rescuing those 300,000 soldiers.

With a makeshift armada of civilian boats, he turned what looked like a disaster into one of history’s greatest feats of survival.

This is the Theory of Constraints in action.

In your own life, you’ve got a million fires to fight, but what’s the one battle you need to win to turn everything around?

Just like Churchill, your victory lies in focusing on the bottleneck that, once cleared, will shift the whole game. One thing holding everything else back.

It might be your self-doubt, a toxic relationship, those two or three alcoholic beverages you have every night, or that procrastination habit you can’t shake. The Theory of Constraints teaches that if you focus on the constraint, everything else starts flowing.

A study in the Harvard Business Review found that teams focusing on removing bottlenecks improved performance by 25% more than those who tried to fix everything at once. Imagine applying this to your life.

Instead of trying to be better at everything—fatherhood, your job, your fitness—start with the one thing that’s truly holding you back.

Like Tim Ferriss said, “What you don’t do determines what you can do.” Strip away the noise. Focus on fixing the one bottleneck in your life, and you’ll see exponential results across the board.

Stop trying to improve everything. Find the one constraint that’s holding you down and break it. Because until you do, you’ll always be spinning your wheels. Attack your bottleneck and watch your life flow. The path to winning is simpler than you think. You’ve just got to start with what matters most. This is where your real work begins, and here’s how to do it…

Here are the 5 steps to follow:

• Identify the Constraint: Identify the biggest bottleneck/constraint that is holding you back from achieving your goal.

• Exploit the Constraint: Maximize the performance of the identified constraint without major changes or investments.

• Subordinate Everything Else to the Constraint: Align all other processes or systems to support the optimal performance of the constraint.

• Elevate the Constraint: If the constraint still limits performance, take steps to permanently increase its capacity.

• Repeat the Process: Once one constraint is resolved, move on to the next constraint, as the system will always have some limiting factor.

• Bonus: If the constraint cannot be fixed, eliminate it or find a workaround.

For example, if you find yourself having a few drinks a night and going to bed late while trying to cut fat and you find that you’re not able to cut the fat, you optimize sleep (go to bed earlier) and cut the alcohol, which will give you the weight loss you’re looking for.

Here’s a quick 30 second video where Jordan Peterson puts in a simplified way:

Hope this helps you crush your goals and get more of your life back this week. Next week I’ll walk you through how to apply extreme focus to get what you want.

Cheers,

Matt

P.S. If this was helpful for you, it might be helpful for someone else. Feel free to share it. My goal is to help as many people as possible stop settling and start living. 🤙