Clarity Through Contrast: The inverted wisdom of focusing on what to avoid rather than what to achieve
Or, why summer is the perfect time to experiment with breaking the addition addiction
(Hey Everyone, I’m experimenting here…sending you a long form newsletter right before the weekend. A few ideas, a poem, a process, and a tool for creating more space in your life. Hope it’s helpful. Let me know!)
Happy summer, friends!
In our corner of the world, this is the first week of summer break… ahhhh, finally.
Vancouverites have a unique relationship with summer. After months of indoor living due to relentless rain, we tend to burst out into the summer season with weird amounts of joy. All of the strange sunshine seems to produce strange behavior. People are friendlier! It’s true. Even Vancouverites have been known to smile, sometimes, to strangers in the summertime.
There’s almost a frenzied energy beneath the low-key summer vibes—whether it’s packing in day trips up a mountain or to a gulf island on weekends, or extending the night after work on a patio or a beach. There’s so much goodness to take in (and we’ve only got so much time before the rain returns). Summer here is truly magical.
With the arrival of summer, I’ve been thinking about the wisdom of non-doing. Summer seems especially well suited for this. The change of season offers a chance to consider other changes that may be needed. Whether or not you have big travel plans, there’s a chance to occupy a different (internal) terrain, to shift rhythms and postures, to evaluate commitments, to move at a more restful pace. Hopefully there’s space for you to do this over summer.
Because, in an overly busy world with overflowing options, it’s what we decide not to do that ends up making the biggest difference. In this attention economy, where focus is hard to come by, it’s what we choose not to chase, that ends up leading us.
Summer is for subtraction.
It’s the perfect time to experiment with breaking the addition addiction.
The Cost of Addition Addiction
Consider for a moment, the typical way we solve problems.
When faced with a challenge, often the instinct is to add something new—initiate a new project, acquire a new tool, adopt a new habit. Each new problem, it seems, requires adding a new thing to do. We might call this the reflexive addition habit.
But this is the bad math of late capitalism. The relentless accrual of more is part of the problem itself. The constant adding on eventually leaves us no choice but to divide, until all is gone.
You likely know this. Perhaps you have your own lived examples of how the bad math of constantly adding on, eventually takes from you.
The stress and exhaustion of overcommitment
The chronic busyness that flirts with burnout
The scattered focus and low productivity
The decreased energy for tasks, let alone fun
The guilt of neglecting the important people and priorities
Addition addiction is sustained by the illusion that more is more. (Which part of my brain understands, and the other half is: Yeah, yeah I get that “less is more”, but not in this case. We need more! More is more! MOAR more! Actually as I write this, I recall a comment, that is likely a criticism though it certainly isn’t a compliment, that my wife Aimee has offered a number of times: why is it so often “more is more” with you?)
Reality of course, is that more, eventually, is less. Addition addiction drains our energy, divides our attention, and dilutes our efforts. It ultimately leaves us exhausted and unfulfilled.
Addressing the reflexive addition habit within organizational life, Stanford management professor, Robert Sutton wrote an article called Why Bosses Should Ask Employees to Do Less—Not More (linking it here even though it’s behind a paywall in case you really like the title of this article 😎 )
“It isn’t that addition is inherently bad. But when leaders are undisciplined about piling on staff, gizmos, software, meetings, rules, training and management fads, organizations become too complicated, their people get overwhelmed and exhausted, and their resources are spread too thin that all their work suffers. For so many companies, the opposite –less, less, less– is the key to success. Subtraction clears our minds and gives us time to focus on what really counts. It sets the stage for creative work, giving us the space to fail, fret, discuss, argue about and experiment with seemingly crazy ideas– the ideas that can transform a company, and make employees happier and more productive… The idea is that by eliminating things that are unnecessarily burdensome, such as filling out expense reports, meetings that are too long, and all that other stuff that saps too much time and emotional energy, it leaves more time and will to do things that are time-consuming and frustrating–the stuff that innovation emerges from.”
Organizations (and people) get more complicated over time. We accrue. We gain experience, competencies, interests, skills, hobbies, dependents. We also gain responsibilities, commitments, habits, and requests for our time. Perhaps worst of all, we gain meetings. This steady accrual of more, registers in our calendars and also our bodies. Left unchecked, it leads to all of the stuff Sutton describes above.
The way out, Sutton notes, is by eliminating things. Said another way, Michael Porter notes, “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” This is the counterintuitive power of subtraction.
It’s learning to ask a different set of questions. Instead of asking what new thing will help make XYZ work better? It’s important to ask, what could I get rid of that would make XYZ work better?
Of course, we need both addition and subtraction. All living systems—people, organizations, ecosystems—add. And as they grow, they naturally grow in complexity.
However, the difference between mere growth and true flourishing is like the difference between an overgrown vine and a well-tended one: pruning.
The same applies to our decision making, leading, and living. The difference between hazy and clear, or overwhelmed and on-purpose, is subtraction.
It’s learning what to eliminate, not just what to expand, that creates the space for simplicity to emerge within complexity.
Embracing the power of subtraction allows us to find clear, purposeful direction amid life's inherent complexities.
Subtracting is the New Flourishing
Today’s newsletter is about harnessing the power of subtraction. More specifically, I’ll provide an overview of the principle of inversion, and I’ll share how this idea relates to anti-goals—a practical way for practicing subtraction. We’ll also look at a few examples of how anti-goals work, and I’ll give you a tool and a process to bring it all to life. And yes, there will be poetry involved, to make sure things stay practical. 😎
And I think it’d be a lot of fun if we could apply all of this to Summer 2024. More on that in a moment.
Today’s newsletter is for those of us who have a hard time dealing with addition addiction. This is for us who tend to take things on, say yes quickly, have a ‘let’s do it’ attitude, and live with a big heart and a big plate. These are amazing traits. And along with being high capacity and all-embracing, there is a danger when our ambition is only additive.
The drive to take on more, when combined with the ability to do so, has a way of creating confusion and weariness, at best. The real danger is becoming successful at the wrong things. It’s climbing the mountain only to find that you’ve been climbing the wrong mountain the entire time.
Subtraction is what enables you to move from cluttered to clear, and distracted to dedicated.