Subtract

Key Concepts

Humans are biologically wired to add rather than to subtract 

“Our instinct to acquire food may also extend to our adding of other things. By having participants acquire things while hooked up to machines that show brain activity, neuroscientists have confirmed that food acquisition as well as other types of acquisition activates the same reward system in the brain: the mesolimbocortical pathway. This pathway runs from the outer layer of our brains, the cerebral cortex, which aligns our thoughts and actions with goals; into our midbrain structures that house emotional life; and deep into our ventricle tegmental area, the origin of dopamine pathways.” (p. 57)

The goal is not simply to  subtract, it’s both adding and subtracting

“Let me be clear here: to find the options we are missing, we need to go from thinking add or subtract to thinking add and subtract.” (p. 105)

Getting to a better less requires more work

“We are interested in this less beyond more: a post-satisficed less. Getting to post-satisficed less requires more steps. Then, even if we put in the effort to go beyond good enough, we still face all the familiar anti-less forces, from our tendency to overlook subtraction, to our instincts to add, to a society built on the gospel of more-ality. In other words, extra effort can bring post-satisficed less, but so long as we fail to subtract, extra effort will bring post-satisficed more.” (p. 144)

“Subtracting” implies a loss, so we need terms to invert the concept

“If sparking joy and finding flow are too touchy-feely for you or your audience, there’s a more detached way to sell your subtracting. Invert it. To see how this works, we need to appreciate that the idea of subtraction has a negative valence.” (p. 165)

“Loss aversion is powerful, widespread, and well publicized. But loss aversion should not excuse our subtraction neglect. The subtraction we are after is an improvement—and improvement is not a loss, even when it comes via less.” (p. 169)

“Less is not a loss. But to avoid any misunderstanding, we can invert subtraction—just like Kate Orff. Her verbs reveal, clean, and carve are gentler alternatives to subtract. They do not invoke a negative valence, and they do not activate loss aversion.” (p. 169)

“Once I began to look for it, inversion was everywhere. Tufte doesn’t tell us to subtract what we’ve already drawn. He challenges us to ‘maximize our information to ink ratio.’” (p. 169)

Often, the best way to change systems and behaviors is to subtract options

“Daniel Kahneman put it this way: “Lewin’s insight was that if you want to achieve change in behavior, there is one good way to do it and one bad way. The good way is by diminishing restraining forces, not by increasing the driving forces.” Lewin’s “bad way” was to add—whether incentives for good behavior or punishments for bad behavior—because this increases tension in the system.” (p. 178)

Subtraction checklist: “Less list”

• “Subtract before improving (e.g., triage)

• “Make subtracting first (e.g., Jenga) 

• “Persist to noticeable less (e.g., Springsteen’s Darkness)

• “Reuse your subtractions (e.g., doughnut holes)” (pp. 197-8)

Takeaways

“Invert: Try less before more. Subtract detail even before you act, as with triage. Then, once you are ready to make changes, put subtracting first—play Jenga. And remember, just because we now appreciate that less is not a loss, that does not mean that your audience and customers do. So, tell them about this book and, in the meantime, don’t “subtract.” Instead, clean, carve, and reveal. Add a unit of transformation.” (p. 250)

“Expand: Think add and subtract. Nature and Maya Lin show us that these are complementary approaches to change. Adding should cue subtracting, not rule it out. Try accessing a different multitude. The father might see what the bicycle designer misses. If you run out of multitudes, hire an editor. And don’t forget to zoom out to see the field, because stop-doings and negative numbers are not unpossible. Plus, the field is where the tension is, and removing it is the “good” way to change systems. So sure, add diversity, but subtracting racism is the prize.” (p. 250)

“Distill: Focus in on the people. Bikes do not balance, but toddlers can. Strip down to what sparks joy. Decluttering delights, and so does the psychology of optimal experience. Use your innate sense for relative difference. Taking away a mammoth is a bigger transformation than adding one. Embrace complexity, but then strive for the essence. Forget objects, remember forces—and pass mechanics. Subtract information and accumulate wisdom.” (p. 251)

“Finally, persist: Keep subtracting. Can you make less undeniable? Bruce Springsteen made Darkness visible. Costa Rica made neutrality noticeable. Chip made an empty go-kart funny. Don’t forget that you can reuse your subtractions, like doughnut holes. Subtract stuff to leave a legacy of options—like Sue, Leo, and Elinor.” (p. 251)

Quotables

“I told Ben that if he really wanted a subtractive approach to productivity, he needed a stop-doing list. These lists had come to my attention by way of the management expert Jim Collins’s book Good to Great. With the no-bell, Ben could either add tasks to his already packed workload, or he could add fewer to no tasks and ring the bell for whichever ones he passed on. Ben’s current workload is encoded in his mind as an unbreachable baseline, like the square footage of my pre-renovation home, or like a number line that ends at zero. The bell doesn’t provide for taking away beyond that point. I hoped a stop-doing list would shift that baseline, cuing Ben to consider both what he might add to his daily regimen and also what he might remove from it.” (p. 121)

“Compiled over decades of teaching English, William Strunk Jr.’s writing guide was updated in 1959 by his former undergraduate student E. B. White. Their resulting book, The Elements of Style, still appears on more course syllabi than any other book. Perhaps the most famous Strunk and White advice is their blunt reminder to subtract: ‘Omit needless words.’” (p. 152)

“A couple of years later, she was applying to graduate schools and shared with me an application question she knew I would find amusing. One of the questions asked by Harvard’s Graduate School of Design was: What is your reaction to the phrase, ‘Less is More,’ an aphorism found in many disciplines? (300 words)” (p. 153)

“Today, GDP growth is a goal for nearly every government. GDP does what it was set up to do—but no more. It measures production, not welfare. As a result, it misses some useful less.” (p. 217)

“If you’re like me, weeding out a single book, even one you will never read, is traumatic. Librarians nonetheless know that weeding is necessary. The alternative is pulping: indiscriminately taking entire sections of books to a plant where they will be disassembled, dissolved into a milky liquid, and reconstituted as paper. When pulping took 210,000 nonfiction books from Manchester Central Library in the UK, the process brought librarians to tears. It was “cultural vandalism at industrial scale.” Who’s to say a book not checked out in the last ten years won’t bring someone joy, or become the basis on which civilization is reconstructed? Weeding books is like our brain’s synaptic pruning; pulping is a lobotomy.” (p. 232)