How can you break through the “Pick Two” rule of the Iron Triangle? Let’s start with an experiment…
Try This
- Find something near by. A cup, a notebook, a shoe.
- Now start a timer for 15 seconds.
- Describe what you see. Either out loud or write it down. When the timer ends, stop.
Done? Good. Put that aside for a second.
Next, Try This
- Start a new timer for 60 seconds.
- Look at that same object from the last test again.
- Try your hardest to keep describing it. Notice things you may not have considered last time. Push yourself to find more. Don’t stop early, even if you think you’re done.
- When time’s up, compare the two.
What changed?
Most people will find that even if they were confident after 15 seconds they described it well, with the 60-second description they went deeper. Found more texture, more color, more shades (figuratively or literally). Of course, nothing about the object changed. What changed was your focus.
This is where quality comes from not from pure blood-sweat-and-tears effort, or from adding more things to do (more objects to look at), but from choosing where to pay attention and staying there.
Let’s try one more thing
- Pick a single part of that same object. A seam on a shoe. The rim of a cup. The spine of a notebook.
- Look only at that.
- Look as long as you can. I think you will see the point.
It’s smaller. More focused. And what you thought was a nothing, has many qualities of its own. Now there’s less to process. Less ambiguity.
Did you do more with less time, or less with more time? Was there less quality when you zoomed in? That whole Iron Triangle is a fallacy. Speed, No. You gained clarity. You went deeper, faster.
“Good, fast, cheap pick two” is a great saying. I like it. I’ve used it to help me make decisions. But like with all tips, it is not the whole story. If you have 20 things to do, you will need to make sacrifices, but it is better to reframe it: In the same amount of time how many of the 20 can I do if I cut 10 of them from the list. I bet then you can achieve good, fast, and cheap. Maybe it should be an Iron Square: Good, Fast, Cheap, and Doing Everything. All 4 is what is impossible.
Focus works like that. It’s a cycle. Narrowing scope increases speed. Committing attention increases quality. The product of both will help you do it with any other lens like cost and complexity.
This isn’t just an observation trick. It’s how great startups win.
Most people think building something great takes time a lot of time. Or money. Or a big team. But that’s because they misunderstand where quality actually comes from.
It’s not time. It’s not budget.
It’s focus.
Just like the object you examined, a product isn’t “done” because you’ve spent weeks on it. It’s great because someone paid sustained attention to exactly the right part of it.
That’s what great founders do. They don’t cut corners. They cut scope. They shrink the surface area until it fits their resources and then they go deeper on it than anyone else would.
When you have only one thing to solve, you don’t get analysis paralysis. You decide quickly because you’re not drowning in competing priorities. You can scope tightly and say, “Let’s find some smart ways to hack this with other tools or techniques,” because you’re not burdened by the whole picture you just need to nail this specific piece.
This is how speed and quality stop being tradeoffs. Focus increases both. Less guessing. Fewer distractions. Faster feedback. Better outcomes.
A big company might have a thousand people working on a thousand things. A great startup gets 3 people working on the right thing for just long enough to make it undeniable.
That’s how you get good, fast, and cheap all at once.
It’s not impossible. It’s just focus.
Sean Shadmand 