“...I think I’ve said that phrase about 200 times.”
When Elon Musk repeats himself, you listen.
Elon actually overstated the count by a factor of 10. Checking the transcript from the Cheeky Pint podcast, Elon said ‘limiting factor’ 25 times.
I listened because Elon’s progress obsession cuts through the noise.
I’m less interested in rockets than in the way he thinks. I want to understand Elon’s frameworks, algorithms, and approach to decision-making.
When progress stalls, there is always a reason why it stalls.
Where there is smoke, there is fire, right?
And for a man intent on making us a multi-planetary species, progress can’t stall.
Elon hunts the bottleneck—the single limiting factor jamming everything up.
It's the missing key to the door right in front of you.
Once identified, he unlocks it fast.
When you hear him talk about the computing chips that power AI, he sees two limiting factors. The availability of chips and the lack of electricity on Earth.
And so, Tesla builds its own chips. Space data centres tap endless solar. It beats earthly red tape and the weather.
You’ll never face this exact problem, but the same logic scales down.
Most leaders push harder. Elon finds the choke point first.
Your stalled project tells the same story.
You’ve seen it: the dragging deadline, circling meetings, the underperformer nobody wants to name.
Asking “What’s the limiting factor?” cuts through excuses.
It will reveal skill gaps, lazy assumptions, and probably some poor decisions.
But once you know what the limiting factor is, then you can tackle it.
I cast my mind back to unravelling the repair capacity problem. The blindness of the leaders before we began becomes clearer.
They wrongly assumed the network had enough capacity—that was the biggest limiting factor.
No one even questioned it.
Take Netflix’s DVD mail test.
Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph wondered: Will one DVD survive the post?
They mailed it to themselves in a padded envelope. When it arrived, the limiting factor disappeared, and their business launched.
Watch:
Apply it this week.
Next time progress stalls, pause. Name the one constraint.
Test it cheap and fast, like that envelope.
Tough calls may follow—hiring, firing, rethinking.
That’s leadership.
When progress stalls, don’t push harder. Find the limiting factor.
