Addition Through Subtraction
If you’re looking to make big changes to your workday, one way to do that is to practice the concept of addition through subtraction - which is essentially asking the question: What can I take out before adding in something new?
This can be a powerful concept but in practice it’s hard to implement day to day for two big reasons. In this episode I talk you through those roadblocks and give you a two-step process for how you can start improving your workday by subtracting first.
Episode Transcription
Intro: If you’re looking to make big changes to your workday, one way to do that is to practice the concept of addition through subtraction - which is essentially asking: What can I take out before adding in something new.
This can be a really powerful concept for us but in practice it can be hard to implement day to day for two big reasons. So in this episode I want to talk you through those roadblocks and give you a two-step process for how you can start improving your workday by subtracting first. Here we go.
Main:
One of the reasons that your workday mindset can be such an important driver for structural change in your day is because in order to make changes that we want to see, we need to bring a certain type of mindset to bear.
And one of the ways to make an immediate impact on your workday is to adopt and practice the concept of addition through subtraction.
Now addition through subtraction basically means that as you move through your workday, you’re constantly looking for things you can subtract before you add.
You move through your day asking the question: What can I take out before adding in?
This is a simple concept but in practice it can be hard for us, and I want to give you two big reasons why that is:
First, when we want to change something about our day, our initial instinct is generally to think: “What can I add” - or what new thing can I introduce to make this better.
That includes: new routines, a new work tool, a new schedule, a new anything.
But the challenge that we encounter when we go straight to adding something new is that we haven’t done anything to clear out the old stuff first, and by that I mean both our physical STUFF but also our mental stuff. We haven’t done anything to address the old routines, the old processes, the old beliefs, the old STUFF that was blocking and congesting our workday, and that probably played a major role in why we decided we wanted to make a change in the first place.
Sometimes we have years or even decades of thinking and thought processes and routines around how we work that we have to uproot before we can make room for something new - otherwise all we’re doing is adding yet another thing to the mix.
The second reason that the concept of addition through subtraction can be hard for us is that we generally have an unwillingness or a resistance to letting things go - and that unwillingness exists both consciously and subconsciously.
Consciously we don’t like to let some things go because we actually do like them or they partially work or they do serve some purpose, or they’re comfortable and familiar to us. Maybe it’s something that we’ve aaaalways done, and even though it’s not the best use of our time, we still keep it around because it’s familiar.
Subconsciously, we don’t like to let go of things because we have an emotional connection to them or - and this one is really important - they act as buffers between us and things we want to avoid.
They’re easy and they’re simple and so we drag them out forever and hold on to them because that means we don’t have to do some of our hardest work, or confront our stress or anxiety around a project, or having to deal with a client we don’t want to deal with - and or mind tricks us into being busy to avoid it.
One example is checking email. I had a client I worked with who started her day by spending probably an hour or more responding to emails first thing in the morning, some of which were important but most of them were actually not that important.
And when we dug in we realized that she would take her good old time writing some elaborate response to a simple request or something that shouldn’t have taken that much thought.
And eventually she realized that the reason she kept doing that was because it allowed her to put off harder work that took more brain power.
In other words she was subconsciously creating a buffer every morning between her and doing hard work or a project that she didn’t want to do because it helped her to put it off - and even though she KNEW that it was not productive to start her morning that way, she resisted subtracting it from her day for that reason.
So if our default reaction when we want to make a change is to add, and if we compound that with our conscious and subconscious desire to hold on to things, what can we do?
The answer is focusing on subtraction. If we’ve identified a problem we want to fix, or if there’s a change we want to make, we have to focus on asking this question: “What I can subtract to create space for the new concept or idea I want to introduce?”
And even more specifically, “How can I create more space in my day for impactful work by subtracting ineffective things from my day?”
So let me give you a two step process here that you can use to start thinking about addition through subtraction.
Step 1 is to take 10 minutes to write down tasks or ways you spend your time each day that are ineffective.
And when i say ineffective I mean things that ultimately do not move your big projects forward. Or if you had to write a job description, they probably wouldn’t fall within your job description.
Or there’s someone else on your team who does this thing way better than you, or there’s a specialist or a contractor who you could find to do this for you, and they’d do it half the time and twice as good.
I’m talking about anything that’s ineffective compared to what you COULD be doing with your time.
Personally when I think about my workday I ask the question: is this something that only I’m able to do?
And I ask that question because I want to fill my day with as many things that only I can do because that means anything that I could delegate or eliminate in any way just helps me subtract more of the things that I really don’t need to be involved in or that I’m really not that efficient or good at in the first place, so that I can add more of the things that only I can do - because that’s what generally helps my business thrive and it’s what makes me personally the happiest.
See part of our challenge is that we think we don’t have enough time in the day, but often what actually is happening is we’re moving through our day unfiltered and without being intentional about how we spend our time, and therefore we let anything and everything into our workday that comes into our field of vision. That includes stuff we should be doing and stuff we shouldn’t.
But here’s the deal: you’ll never clear enough space to make room for the changes you want to make, and you’ll never give those changes a fighting change, unless you get real with yourself about how you might be holding on to things you do or the way you do them for the wrong reasons.
So that’s step 1.
After you’ve written these things down, then step 2 is to ask the question: how can I delegate, reduce or eliminate as many of these ineffective things from my day?
This is not the right work for you to be spending your good energy on, so we need to get in the habit of passing this work on to capable team members, setting up systems that are focused on delegation, if you’re an entrepreneur hiring part time staff like an executive assistant, being more intentional about how much time you spend on this kind of work (like my client who was spending an hour on email), or making the tough choice to cut out something from our workday that you like or are good at in exchange for making room for more of the work that matters.
Some of you might be sitting there thinking well that’s great that you can do that, but literally there’s nothing I can delegate or reduce or eliminate in my day. Everything is essential. I have to do it all.
If you’re having this thought, I understand that because like I said earlier, some of us have moved through our work routines for YEARS without looking at subtraction as an option. So if you are having that thought, I encourage you to keep it top of mind for 3 days in a row. So just make a note to yourself as you start your workday to look for opportunities to subtract.
And my guess is that if you look at your day with this different lens you eventually will start to see a LOT of ways you can apply this principle.
So just remember at a high level that before you start adding to your day, I want you to think about what you can subtract first. It’s going to help you move closer to the really impactful day to day changes you want to see.
Go have a great workday.