Stop optimizing. Start eliminating.

The Simplicity Protocol Newsletter Issue 7

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One morning in late January, I walked into the kitchen to make our son's lunch. The pantry was empty. Because the entire system depended on me remembering, and I was already running at capacity.

This wasn't a one-time thing. For weeks, I'd been making uncharacteristic mistakes: forgetting essentials at the store, running out of toilet paper, no butter in the fridge. Small failures that felt personal. I'm the person who handles things. I'm organized. How am I forgetting butter?

The frustration turned inward first. Then sideways toward my husband Mike, for not catching what I'd dropped. Then the guilt hit, because he can't catch what he doesn't know is falling.

And I realized this cycle (frustration, resentment, guilt, repeat) was threatening something I actually cared about protecting.

So I depersonalized it. I looked at the problem the same way I'd look at a client's operations: where's the bottleneck?

Me. I was the bottleneck. A single point of failure in a system that shouldn't have had one.

I think in systems at work. I build processes and delegate and automate for clients every day. But at home, I'd been running the household on love and memory and effort.

And love and memory and effort don't scale.