Overheard a foreman say something that made me rethink my whole workflow

I was grabbing coffee last week and heard this old foreman from a crew in Portland tell his apprentice that 'the quickest way to finish a job is to slow down your first step.' I thought he was just being a grump but then I tried it on a wall layout. I spent an extra 15 minutes double checking my first corner reference and it saved me like an hour of rework later. Has anyone else found that one small change in how you start a project makes a huge difference?

2 comments

2 Comments

elliot_roberts12d ago

Man I hate to be that guy but "quickest way to finish a job is to slow down your first step" isn't exactly right. It's more like the quickest way is to NOT rush your first step, that's different. But yeah, I've seen that exact thing on framing jobs where guys will spend ten minutes marking a single reference line and then everything else just falls into place. Its like that old saying about measure twice cut once, but applied to your whole setup instead of just one board.

josephbailey12d ago

That framing example actually clicked for me, never thought of it that way before.