Two people cooking the same set of dishes can finish an hour apart without either working faster. The difference is sequencing, because a kitchen is a set of resources that can only be used one at a time.
The oven is the bottleneck
A domestic oven holds one or two trays at a useful temperature and cannot run at two temperatures simultaneously.
Anything roasted therefore has to queue, and a session planned without regard to that queue spends long stretches with the cook waiting rather than working.
Grouping items that share a temperature into one load, and choosing a compromise temperature where they differ slightly, removes most of that waiting immediately.
Long items start first, regardless of the menu order
Anything with a long unattended phase, such as grains, stocks, braises and dried legumes, produces no work once it is running.
Starting those first means they cook in parallel with everything else instead of extending the session at the end.
The instinct to cook dishes one at a time in the order they will be eaten is what turns a two-hour session into a four-hour one.
Shared preparation should happen once
Several dishes usually need the same base work: onions sliced, garlic prepared, herbs picked, vegetables cut to similar sizes.
Doing that work once for everything is faster than repeating it per dish, and it means the board and knife are cleaned once rather than four times.
The same applies to cooked bases, where a single large pan of aromatics can be divided and taken in different directions.
Cleaning is part of the sequence, not the aftermath
A kitchen with no clear surface stops working, so washing has to happen during the waiting periods that the sequence creates.
Ordering tasks so that raw ingredients are handled before cooked ones also reduces how often surfaces and equipment need cleaning mid-session.
Cooking the messiest item last, when its equipment will be washed anyway, is a small change that saves a full round of cleaning.
Cooling is a resource with a queue of its own
Hot food cannot go straight into a closed container or a full refrigerator without raising the temperature of everything around it.
Space to spread food out and cool it quickly is limited, so finishing several hot dishes simultaneously creates a jam at the end of the session.
Staggering the finishing times, so items become ready in sequence rather than together, is the last piece that makes the whole schedule work.