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It's a metaphor for a metaphor.
If the bottleneck is the part of the bottle that's the narrowest, then in a production setting like a factory, it refers to the stage or element of a system that limits the output.
Like traffic on an on-ramp, unable to flow onto the highway, the inputs get backed up. No matter how much you increase production in other areas of the system, the throughput (and ultimate productivity) will be limited by that bottleneck.
Read MoreWhen I was a music teacher, I had to present some counterintuitive ideas to parents who wanted to instill a love of music in their children.
Rather than advocating for a romantic, passionate affair with the instrument, I took a much cooler tone.
I suggested that practicing music is just like brushing our teeth. We do it whether we want to or not, and then it's done.
Read MoreThe other day, I finally went back to a coffee shop that I had last visited sometime in March 2020.
I'd grabbed coffee and snacks there from time to time, but I hadn't brought my laptop to do work there since right before the pandemic.
Going there used to be a key part of my routine. I would convince myself that a change of scenery was necessary in the middle of my workday—that I could not possibly get more work done in the same spot I'd been sitting in for the past three hours.
Read MoreGuess what? I decided to try NaNoWriMo for the first time.
During NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, participants aim to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November.
I've never written a novel before, but I'm now over 4,000 words into one. And I'm already questioning whether word count is actually a good metric for me to focus on.
Read MoreTransformation is an experience both magical and unsettling.
Suddenly, the world you thought you knew is remapped. Like a bougie kitchen renovation, what was once familiar is made new, and even what has stayed the same is unrecognizable in its new context. We feel so different that everything around us feels different, too.
In such a situation, we might want to start over, with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. However, this can be just as deceptive as the illusion we now believe we’ve left behind.
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