The constraint that forces clarity.
Most leaders think adding time solves problems.
Give the team another week. Schedule more meetings. Extend the deadline.
But Parkinson’s Law tells us work expands to fill the time available. That presentation scheduled for next month will somehow require every day until delivery. The project with a generous timeline will use every hour allocated.
The magic happens in constraint.
When Amazon gives teams two-pizza meetings (no more people than two pizzas can feed), decisions happen faster. A startup with 18 months of runway moves faster than a competitor with three years of funding.
Your best people don’t need more time. They need clearer priorities.
The executive who takes two weeks to respond to emails isn’t more thoughtful than the one who responds in two hours. The team that spends six months on strategy isn’t more strategic than the one that decides in six weeks.
Time abundance breeds mediocrity. It allows us to avoid the hard choices, delay the difficult conversations, and postpone the decisions that matter.
Innovative leaders create artificial scarcity. They compress timelines not to stress their people, but to force focus. They understand that constraints don’t limit creativity—they unleash it.
The question isn’t whether you have enough time. The question is whether you’re using scarcity as a tool.
Your best work happens when you have less time than you need.
