For most of my life, I didn’t understand bottlenecks. And years after I understood what a bottleneck was, I still didn’t understand necessary conditions.
Each night I use the Atomic Ivy Lee method to make my todo list for the next day.
My old way of prioritizing was based on urgency. What was screaming the loudest.
Now I aim at bottlenecks.
A Necessary Condition is a state required for your system to function at all (e.g. Sleep, Diet, Mental Health).
A Bottleneck is the point of maximum resistance that limits the throughput of your system (e.g. Distribution, Conversion Rate, Churn).
I handle most necessary conditions with habits.
- Diet: No bread. No added sugar. Avoid fried food.
- Sleep: No caffeine after 10am. No screens after 10pm.
- Mental Health: Meditate for 1 to 2 hours.
But sometimes emergent necessary conditions land on your desk.
- A sudden health scare
- A critical server outage
- An urgent family matter
If you ignore necessary conditions, they become the bottleneck.
You have to secure the floor (necessary conditions) before you can raise the ceiling (bottlenecks).
The two-step process for my Atomic Ivy Lee list:
1. Tend to Necessary Conditions: Extinguish the fires that threaten the system.
2. Aim at the Bottleneck: Once the system is stable, attack the limiting factor.Bottlenecks are rarely easy. If they were quick fixes, you would have solved them by now. But solving them is the only way to reach the next level.
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What is your current bottleneck?