My favourite comedian is James Acaster.
In his legendary stand up he describes “Lovin’ a good loophole”.
What does he ask the genie for when it comes out the lamp?
He can't ask for more wishes…
So what does he ask for?
Infinite genies 😏
Which also solves his second problem… more friends!
Joking aside.
There is a way of thinking that helps us find loopholes / double bubbles / more leverage from one thing.
There are many names for it. Stacking Functions. Multifunctional Design. High-leverage activities.
Today we’re going to call it
The Keystone Switch: A change to an existing activity that stacks several benefits on unchanged inputs.
I’ll walk you through how to find your own keystone switches to help you squeeze every drop of juice out of your day to day.
Walking as a Keystone
Rob Moore did a book called ‘Life Leverage’ where he describes having his haircut in a meeting to save time (lunatic).
But for me, this whole concept is more about re-positioning / re-thinking vs stacking activities to save time.
Simple example.
Walking.
Dan Koe (moody bastard) is a big influencer who claims to be the first to own the ‘one person business’ narrative. He’s obsessed with human potential, and has build SaaS products for creative workflows for smart people.
He’s also described as ‘The Walking King’ as so much of his earlier content focused on this. As it was his top tip for improving his performance.
We don’t need to go into the science. But Stanford studies show walking increased creative ideation for 81% of people, with a person's creative output increasing by an average of 60% when walking.
I have a lot of walking meetings with my clients for this very reason:
Old Way = People sat at their desk → Get distracted → Start switching off → Brains stagnate.
As opposed to.
New Way = People get exercise → Less opportunity for distraction → People stay engaged → Brains / neural connections improve.
Who’d thought there’d be so much benefit from just switching from a screen to a phone.
Another example:
A lot of my work is delivering brand partner campaigns for big influencers.
Webinars are some of our best performing campaigns.
The old workflow had a few problems. Slow landing page turnaround from the brand delayed promo, which hurt results, which hurt renewals. And we never reliably got the registration data we use to improve.
So last week we decided to self-host the landing page:
Old Way = Brand builds the landing page → Slow turnaround delays promo → We chase for registration stats → We chase again for attendee numbers → Data sometimes never arrives.
As opposed to.
New Way = We spin up the landing page → Drive traffic → Present.
Yes, a little more extra effort for us. But look at the benefits: faster turnaround, no promo delays, no chasing for data, less work for the brand.
Plus, the audience trusts the creator more than the brand, so sign-ups are higher too.
Small change → Massive impact.
So, how do you find your own?
The 8 Keystone Switches
Here’re 8 ways to switch up the way you think about your activities and processes.
1. Combine - Stick two things together that everyone assumes are separate.
Walking + meetings is the obvious one. But Katy Milkman ran a study where people could only listen to their favourite audiobooks at the gym. Gym visits went up 51%. Netflix-and-treadchill, basically.
2. Decouple - Split apart things that everyone assumes are done together.
After American Graffiti, George Lucas took a smaller directing fee on Star Wars in exchange for sequel and merchandising rights. Fox thought they were worthless (they’d been burned on Doctor Dolittle merch). Lucasfilm later sold to Disney for $4.05 billion. Oops.
3. Invert the default - Reverse the thing everyone does without thinking.
Amazon banned PowerPoint. Instead, meetings start with everyone silently reading a six-page memo. The author has to think clearly, everyone starts with the same info, and it’s much easier for everyone to participate.
4. Repurpose the by-product - Turn your waste into something useful.
Henry Ford’s sawmills were drowning in sawdust and scrap wood from making Model Ts. So he turned it into charcoal briquettes and sold them through Ford dealerships. That business is now Kingsford. Every barbecue you’ve ever burnt sausages on owes Henry a thank you.
5. Use idle resources - Find what’s sat there doing nothing.
Rubbish trucks couldn’t reach the favelas in Curitiba, Brazil. So the city paid people in bus tokens to bring their rubbish out. The loophole? Bus operators were paid per kilometre, not per passenger. The buses were running anyway. So the empty seats cost the city basically nothing. Cleaner streets, less disease etc.
6. Turn the constraint into the design - Let the limitation design the solution.
In 1972 Southwest Airlines had $143 in the bank. They had to sell one of their four planes. Instead of cutting flights, they figured out how to turn a plane around at the gate in 10 minutes instead of 25. Three planes flying a four plane schedule. And on-time performance actually improved.
7. Change the rule or unit of work - Change how the work itself is done.
UPS routes its drivers in loops of mostly right turns, avoiding turning across traffic. Routes are sometimes longer. But UPS claims it saves 10 million gallons of fuel, cuts emissions, reduces accidents, and delivers 350,000 more packages a year. Would not work in the UK lol.
8. Pick the keystone metric - Obsess over one number that forces everything else to improve.
When Paul O’Neill took over Alcoa, he only talked about worker safety. To get every injury reported to him within 24 hours, they had to build fast communication from the shop floor to the top. Those same channels then carried efficiency ideas. By the time he retired, net income was 5x bigger.
The S.W.I.T.C.H. method
Here’s a framework to go about finding them.
S - See the real job: What is this activity actually for? A meeting’s job is to share info, make decisions, and build relationships. Nobody said it had to involve sitting round a table eating stale biscuits.
W - Waste and idle capacity: What’s unused while this happens? Time, people, data, by-products, attention, empty seats?
I - Inventory the moves: Run the activity through each of the 8 switches above.
T - Tally the stack: List every benefit. Then ask “and then what?” a couple of times to find the knock-on effects.
C - Check the fences: Before you rip something out, find out why it’s there in the first place. And who might get left out (walking meetings aren’t great for everyone).
H - Hedge with a pilot: Try it small, for 2-4 weeks, and make sure you can undo it.
One switch at a time. Otherwise you’ll have no idea what actually worked.
Steal my prompts
Here are two prompts you can copy and paste straight into ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever your AI of choice is.
Prompt 1: Get AI to interview you
You are a world-class operations strategist and systems thinker. Your job is to interview me about one recurring task in my work or life so we can later find "Keystone Switches": single structural changes to an existing activity that stack several benefits on roughly the same inputs.
The task I want to work on is: [DESCRIBE THE TASK IN ONE SENTENCE]
Rules for the interview:
- Ask me ONE question at a time and wait for my answer.
- Keep questions short and plain-English. Dig deeper when my answer is vague.
- Ask no more than 12 questions in total.
Make sure you cover:
1. What the task is actually for (the real job, not its current format)
2. The step-by-step workflow as it happens today
3. Who is involved, and who I depend on or wait for
4. Time, money and effort it takes, and how often it happens
5. Where the delays, frustrations and rework happen
6. What is wasted or sits idle while it happens (time, people, data, by-products, attention, assets)
7. The constraints I think I have, and whether they are law, policy or just habit
8. How I measure success today, and what "great" would look like
9. What I have already tried
When you are done, give me a short summary titled "Task Profile" with: the real job, current workflow, key pain points, idle or wasted resources, constraints, and success metrics. Ask me to confirm it is accurate.
Prompt 2: Get AI to find your Keystone Switches
(Paste this into the same chat once the interview is done. Or paste your own task description at the bottom if you’re skipping the interview.)
Using the Task Profile above, find Keystone Switches for this task. A Keystone Switch is ONE structural change to an existing activity (same people, roughly the same time and cost) that stacks three or more independent benefits and creates positive knock-on effects.
Work through all 8 switch types:
1. Combine: join activities assumed to be separate
2. Decouple: split apart things assumed to be bundled
3. Invert the default: flip what is done automatically
4. Repurpose the by-product: turn waste or outputs into something useful
5. Use idle resources: put unused time, people, assets, data or capacity to work
6. Turn the constraint into the spec: design around a limitation instead of fighting it
7. Change the rule or unit of work: change the format, location, timing or ownership of the work
8. Pick the keystone metric: one measure that, if obsessed over, forces other improvements
For each switch type, suggest the strongest idea (skip any that genuinely don't fit, and say why). For each idea give me:
- The switch, in one sentence
- Old way → New way
- Stacked benefits (aim for 3+)
- Second-order effects ("and then what?")
- Risks: why the current way might exist, who could be left out, what could be gamed
- A Stack Score from 1-5 on Benefits, Durability, Reversibility, Cost, Effort, Risk and Exclusion, then calculate (Benefits x Durability x Reversibility) / (Cost + Effort + Risk + Exclusion)
Then finish with:
- A ranked top 3, with a one-line reason for each
- A simple 2-week pilot plan for the number 1 switch: what to change, what to measure before and after, and what would make me keep, tweak or kill it
Be specific to my situation. No generic advice.
[OPTIONAL: IF YOU SKIPPED PROMPT 1, DESCRIBE YOUR TASK, WORKFLOW AND PAIN POINTS HERE]
You’ll get a good few ideas that are rubbish (that’s fine).
But you only need one ‘aha’ moment.
TL;DR
Find a task
Copy/paste the prompts
Not every switch will be an infinite genie.
But no reason why you too can’t start lovin’ a good loophole ;)
Until next time.
Adam
—
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