The Art of Adding by Taking

Away
By Jan. 19, 2013

NORMALLY I have more ideas than I know what to do

with. Several years ago, however, I ran out of them.

At the time, I was working closely with the senior

leadership of a very large and successful Japanese
company. I had been hired to help it develop new ideas
and strategies in the United States, but was struggling
with a particularly difficult project that required me to
reconcile two completely different perspectives. (Eastern
and Western ways of thinking are often at odds with each
other.) I found myself at a standstill.

I must not have done a very good job of hiding how

useless I was feeling, because a 2,500-year-old snippet
of Chinese philosophy found its way to me anonymously,
via a handwritten note on a Post-it stuck to my work
space.

“To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain

wisdom, subtract things every day,” it said, capsulizing
teachings of Lao Tzu. “Profit comes from what is there,
usefulness from what is not there.”

My first thought was, “Someone wants me gone — I’d be

more useful that way.” But as I read it again and thought
about it, lightning struck.

It dawned on me that I’d been looking at my problem in

the wrong way. As is natural and intuitive, I had been
looking at what to do, rather than what not to do. But as
soon as I shifted my perspective, I was able to complete
the project successfully.

David Saracino

Even though the idea of subtracting things every day was

thousands of years old, it was still radical to me. I decided
to explore the idea further.
I discovered an essay by the management educator Jim
Collins, in which he confirmed the ancient philosophy: “A
great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the
final piece, but equally important, what is not. It is the
discipline to discard what does not fit — to cut out what
might have already cost days or even years of effort —
that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist and marks
the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony, a novel, a
painting, a company or, most important of all, a life.”

In reading several articles in scientific literature, I

discovered that subtraction lights up a brain scan
differently than addition does, because it uses different
circuitry. In fact, accident victims suffering brain injuries
often lose their ability to both add and subtract, retaining
only one of the two. Subtraction is literally a different way
of thinking.

While it hadn’t occurred to me to use subtraction in my

own job, I realized that it is at the root of many
professions. Scientists, mathematicians and engineers
search for theories that explain highly complex
phenomena in stunningly simple ways. Musicians and
composers use pauses in the music — silence — to
create dramatic tension. Athletes and dancers search for
maximum impact with minimal effort. Filmmakers,
novelists and songwriters strive to tell simple stories that
foster both multiple meanings and universal resonance.

The principle of subtraction carries over to the corporate

world. Here are some examples: W. L. Gore, recognized
as one of the world’s most innovative companies,
eliminated job titles in order to release employees’
creativity. When it started out, Scion, the youth-oriented
unit of Toyota, decided not to advertise, and it reduced
the number of standard features on its vehicles to allow
buyers to customize their cars. The British bank First
Direct operates successfully without branches, relying
instead on Internet, telephone and mobile transactions.
Steve Jobs revolutionized the world’s concept of a
cellphone by removing the physical keyboard from the
iPhone. Instagram, acquired last year by Facebook, grew
quickly once its first version, called Burbn, was stripped
of many of its features and reworked to focus on one
thing: photos.

THINK about what you could do — or rather not do — in

your own life that would put these principles into play.
There are two easy ways to begin subtracting things
every day:

First, create a “not to do” list to accompany your to-do

list. Give careful thought to prioritizing your goals,
projects and tasks, then eliminate the bottom 20 percent
of the list — forever.

Second, ask those who matter to you most — clients,

colleagues, family members and friends — what they
would like you to stop doing. Warning: you may be
surprised at just how long the list is.
The lesson I’ve learned from my pursuit of less is
powerful in its simplicity: when you remove just the right
things in just the right way, something good happens.

Matthew E. May is the author of “The Laws of

Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of
Excess Everything.”

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