322. Achieving More with Less: Subtraction Strategies for Success with Leidy Klotz (refreshed episode)

Welcome to episode 322 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about learning how to subtract with Lidy clots.

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You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

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Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about the power of subtraction with Dr. Lidy Klotz. And no, we aren't talking about math per se. More of a less is more vibe and approach to life and business. Lidi was so wonderful to talk to and as you're going to hear in this episode, which first aired in 2021, my husband and I talk about minimizing and reducing and downsizing and all that a lot. So I think about and refer to this episode and Lidi's book Subtract all the Time. I think this episode dovetails really nicely with the recent conversation I had with Vanessa Patrick about her book the Power of Saying no, as well as my conversation last week with Kate Gigax about transitioning to Act 2 in life where you need to find ways to say no to more stuff so you can say yes to what matters. And of course, I'm refreshing this episode today because of how it leads into this coming Friday's episode with Marcy Rader, author of Work well, Play More. She's all about helping people achieve productive, healthy, clutter free living one step at a time. There's a lot of subtraction in there and Marcy mentioned a book on her journey that reminded me a lot of this conversation with Lighty, so I knew it was the perfect one to refresh today. As you listen to the episode, think about the areas in your life where you could use a little optimization, reduction, efficiency, less stress and everything like that. Try to focus on the areas of productivity, clutter and health. So you are all set and ready for that conversation with Marcy coming out on Friday. And if you aren't yet subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, now's a good time to hit that subscribe button to be sure you don't miss that one or any other episode. Don't forget there are links for everything, including past episodes, books like Subtract as well as Work well, Play More and articles all waiting for you in the show. Notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 3 2, 2. All right, let's talk about the power of subtracting. Dr. Lydie Klotz, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Oh, it's great to be here. Thank you.

I feel like I always throw people off, but I like to say, doctor, if you have a PhD, you have earned this at least once that. I want to say it when we go into the show, but I think then people go, oh, yeah, I guess I am a doctor. That's weird. People don't usually say that.

That is exactly what threw me off. Yeah, we just. How do you pronounce your name? And then you hit me with doctor.

I know. Boom, that's you. Well, let's jump right in. I want you to tell the audience a little bit about you. We were talking about in kind of our pre chat about your background, which is not. Well, there isn't really, I think, a common path to behavioral science yet yours is one of the less common paths. So tell a little bit about your background and how you got to behavioral science. Sure.

And it's interesting. I mean, I do think of myself as working with behavioral science, but it's funny when people refer to me as a behavioral scientist, because I'm not sure if I've made that leap yet. But all of my training is in engineering, so I was civil engineering as an undergraduate. And then architectural engineering is what I did my PhD in. And basically kind of all the engineering that goes into how we create buildings and cities and things like that. And I'd always been motivated in doing that work to figure out how we could do this in a more sustainable way. So ways that produce fewer carbon emissions and ways that are more socially just and things like that. There just seemed to be this huge gap between the technology that was available or the building techniques that were available and what was actually happening and what was actually being designed. And that's when I started to get interested in like, okay, well, what is it about, like, engineering design and then just design more broadly, you know, defined as how we change things from how they are to how we want them to be. What is it about that design process that's like, preventing us from realizing these more sustainable outcomes? So that's what led me to behavioral science. And it's just been a really. A really fun ride since.

Yeah, well, and I mean, where you mentioned architecture and within the field of behavioral science and economics, of course, choice architecture, if anybody was to say that there's not a tie, you know, sorry, it's, you know, our. No, but one of our big Nobel winning concepts is based on the way that you structure choices and present information to people. And you use that example of the path that people will take depends on where you place the elevator or where the buttons are. And you have to be thoughtful about all those little tidbits and the human behavior and making sure, you know, where are people gonna cut across the lobby versus not. Or again, if you're gonna take this weird route because of the median that's been put in the road or whatever, you know, all these, you're talking about like city designs and things that you have to think about. There's the way that people should go and then what they will actually do. Which ties exactly into what we talk about in behavioral science.

Yeah, that's totally accurate and it's interesting. I saw a piece that Richard Thaler had written and he, you know, obviously one of the coiners of the term choice architecture and one of the Nobel laureates and he was talking about it's time to kind of extend that analogy to get from the choice architecture, I think he said, into like the plumbing and into the. So basically how do you kind of continue and you know, continuing with this engineering analogy and I think, you know, the other way it's, it's apt is when you're talking about how we design these pathways, but also talking about how we're applying science. Right. And so engineering is the creative application of science. You know, most. That's the broad definition of it. And so those of us, you know, like, like you and like, like your listeners who are applying behavioral science are in many ways, you know, engineering, probably not in the traditional sense of it, but in terms of that basic definition of creatively applying science, I think that there's a, there's a huge overlap there too with, between engineering and behavioral science and architecture design.

For sure.

Yeah. And as we know from when Katie Milkman was on the show, we were talking about this in the intro too, that her background is in engineering. So perhaps it will not be an uncommon route to behavioral sciences. I know for me having a marketing background is one that can be seen as being strange as well to. Or you know, that I went to school for business and then you know, jumped in on the getting my master's in behavioral economics. And people think what like that marketing, that's not the same thing, but it's so applicable to me. And so I love where people will contact from around the world and they have these just so, such a diverse background and are finding uses for behavioral science. I just, I love that. I think it's so, so useful.

One of my best collaborators is Eric Johnson at Columbia and he has a book coming out, so you should interview him for your podcast. But he knows just more than anybody about choice, basically. And so when we talk about choice architecture, he's like, people have been doing choice architecture for a long time. It's just been called marketing. So, so he. So I think there's like a really natural overlap in some ways between marketing and behavioral science. But so it's interesting to hear you say that that's not what people always think.

Yeah, I think it depends on if you're on the academic side or on the applied side.

That's true. Yeah. Academia, we like to draw boundaries and put people in boxes. Say, what are you again?

Yeah, well, definitely want to also touch on a very interesting piece of your background that I don't know if you get to talk about that much anymore. But you were a professional soccer player and you wrote a book about sustainability through soccer. Can you tell a little bit about how maybe your background in sports has tied in with the work you do in behavioral science?

Yeah, I'm not sure if it's tied in any. I think sport. Playing soccer was like my focus for the first 20 years, 20 years of my life. So I omitted that from when you asked for my background. And then the Sustainability Through Soccer book was an attempt to kind of describe some of these systems level concepts. So the ways that, well, systems thinking is this really key idea for sustainability. Right. So how things are related, how, you know, if you move one thing, it changes things in other places. And so I think that was that book. And soccer is very kind of systems oriented sport. Right. So if you think about sports like, you know, baseball or football, they're broken into these discrete plays. Right. And you can say, okay, well that play happened and then the next play happened. Well, soccer, it's like it's just free flowing the whole time and it's. So that's. That was the point of the analogy, you know, seeing, basically seeing this idea of sustainability and systems thinking through, through soccer analogies. I would say though, that the, I mean, the, the teamwork, the research that was the basis of my book and you know, by far the best research I've ever been a part of was just an example of like an incredibly high performing team. And I think that the lessons learned from playing sports and how to work together certainly carry over into that environment. I also think a little bit of the, you know, kind of being willing to go across disciplinary boundaries might come from sports. Right. It's like you realize that there's other ways of. Of learning things in the world outside of just your. Your major. Right. I learned a lot of things by. By playing soccer, and so I could learn a lot of things by learning more about behavioral science, even though I'm technically an engineer by training. So I think those are a couple of the ways that it. That it's probably. Probably carried over after, you know, distracting me for the first 22 years of my life from doing anything productive.

No, no. There's so much to it. And recently did an episode where Michael Bartlett came on and interviewed me about my book on the show, which is a fun sort of experience with that. But he was asking about sports, and there are lots of professional people that played. They got a scholarship and then ended up in the space or whatever it is. And different people who've done research on just. We were talking about Katie Milkman, so potentially that made me think about Angela Duckworth and grit and how that all comes together and the type of people we are. My background being a classically trained opera singer, I think is very valuable with the type of work that I do now. And others might think that that is super weird, but it all comes together in my own mind, and that's all that matters.

So, I mean, there's no question to me with the. With the discipline. Sorry to interrupt, but I can go forever with sports and, like. Yeah. And so do you know Andre Viscontis? She's a podcast host, too. She does Inquiring Minds, but she's. I forget if it's opera or, like, classical music and trained in that area. And then I was. Adam Grant does his book lists, and I got. I got selected for the summer. I was all excited. And I looked at the other books that got selected, and there was one by John Amici, and I was like, I know a guy named John Amici, but I knew him from his. His basketball career. Now he's like an organizational psychology professor, I think, and also writing books. So. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of. A lot of overlap between those things. And I think it's. I think it's really fun to see the things that people do outside of the. Outside of the time that you kind of know them for.

Yeah, well. And learning those little bits to where we can kind of understand what's going on, what makes us who we are and how We. We might approach a problem differently than somebody else. And that. That is all very valuable to know of which one. Also, congratulations for making Adam Grant's book list. That's a big deal. So.

Hooray.

Yes, congratulations. And so great segue. Let's talk about your book. So what inspired your book is called Subtract. And so tell a little bit about how you got there from all of what we've been talking about here so far.

Yeah, from all of what we. That's great. I get to segue into it differently than I normally do. But I'll also give the fun segue, too. But from what we've been talking about before, it's like. So I talked about engineering, right? And being interested in this science of design, how we change things from how they are to how we want them to be, and then also being interested in sustainability, right? Like, why are we overshooting the. These planetary boundaries, whether it's, you know, the amount of emissions in the atmosphere or some, you know, the freshwater stores. And so I think it's. The book arose from asking this, what I consider maybe the most basic applied question, right? It's like when we try to change things from how they are to how we want them to be. That's the applied part, right? What's. What's the first thing that we think of? And I. I'd always been interested in kind of less and less minimalism. And, you know, not as a practicing minimalist or anything, but just as. Okay, how does. How does this happen? How. Why don't. Why isn't this more common? Why does it seem like we're always adding across all these other areas? But the. The real, you know, tipping point in. In my thinking about it actually came by playing Legos with my son, who was 3 at the time. And we were making a. A Lego bridge. And it was not level, so one of the columns was shorter than the other column. And so I tried to solve the problem, right? Tried to change the situation from how it was to how I want it to be. So I turned around behind me to get another block to add to the shorter column. And by the time I had turned back around, Ezra, my son had removed a block from the longer column. And I was like, that's it. That's it. That's what's. That's what I'm thinking about, right, is that, you know, when we encounter these situations, that we can improve in multiple ways. In the two most basic ways are adding something to it or taking something away from it. Why is Our first instinct to add. And, you know, we've since done, I'm sure, more than 10,000 hours worth of research between me and three great behavioral science collaborators here, Gabe Adams, Ben Converse, and Andy Hales. But it's amazing how closely our research findings mapped that initial insight. And so we studied it across Lego structures, not Ezra's Lego structure, but different, carefully, experimentally designed Lego structures and itineraries, recipes. We basically tried to study it across ideas, objects and situations to show that there's something that happened in a lot of contexts. And perhaps the most convincing study is we created these grids on a computer screen. So it's a pattern of squares arranged in a, in a grid. And there are four basic four quadrants in this grid pattern. And the task was to make the quadrants symmetrical from top to bottom and side to side. And we put extraneous blocks in one of the quadrants. And so to solve this task, you could either remove blocks from one quadrant or you could add blocks to all three quadrants. And people overwhelmingly added. So anyway, the long story short, with that research that was published on the COVID of Nature a week before my book came out, which I'm not someone who has any other articles published in Nature, so this was like a huge highlight of my career, both happening a week apart and both related, but that when people try to improve something, their first thought is to think, what can we add to this situation to make it better? It's what I thought of with the Legos. It's what you tend to think of with trying to improve an itinerary. It's why we don't think to, you know, remove things from our, our list of things that we're working on. It's like we jump right to adding to do's when stop doings might be what we need. So that's where it all started. And I mean, as it ties into the book, that is, the first chapter of the book is like, okay, here's this new insight into why we overlook subtraction. But there's also a lot of reasons why we might think to subtract and then not choose it. Probably a lot of the things that you've already talked to your audience about, like loss aversion, the endowment effect, and the IKEA effect, all these reasons why adding might be preferred even when you do think of subtraction. And so the book goes on to explore like, okay, why else is this happening where biological, cultural, economic forces helping cause this oversight of subtraction? And then the latter half of the book gets into, well, what can we do about it now that we know this science and the science is all kind of in one place and has a coherent thread through it, what are the science informed things that we can do to get better at taking away? Does that make sense? That might be more than you bargained for, but you asked how I came to it and that's it.

I love it. No, I'm a fan too of the story behind the book and the story or the researcher or whatever that is. I think there's a lot of value in that. And that piece of like you said that we do have. I know one of the chapters is called Adding Instincts and like you said that we, we do just jump to add stuff and there's no real good reason other than like you said, we're loss averse and just want all your. But we don't even think to get rid of something more often than not. And so in this way, not to say the only reason that you are here because I had seen you in some other stuff too. So my husband has been. I don't think I've talked about this really on the show yet, so we'll see. But my husband has been on a minimalist train for quite some time now. It had started pre pandemic time and then through this. I mean there's been a lot of culling in our world, which is fine. But it's interesting as he's been doing all this research and like you said, he does not. He's not a minimalist in the truest sense of, you know, you have one chair and one fork or whatever that some get very extreme of which, you know, looking at some of the videos like that just looks like a depressing and sad life versus there's got to be some balance here where it's not just this like art of Nothingness is not the same. And so he has been doing a lot of research on that minimal space and also essentialism and which for me essentialism is very close to. I'm a big fan of when it came out and I still like the life changing magic of tidying up, which is it's become cliche a little bit now perhaps because of her Netflix show or whatever it is. But that just even the, you know, does this spark joy? And when I do mindset work with people, I talk about this, you know, is this going to help me reach my goal? Type of a Same thing. Is this actually something that's helping me get there or not? And if it's not Then don't do it. And I like, like you said, if the, instead of a longer list of to dos, we need a list of stop doings. And so, which I think is a great way to phrase that. But to get rid of all this excess, do you have any insight into, can you tell a little bit more about why we feel inclined to do more and why it may sort of instinctively feel bad to have less? I find with people there's something that feels really good to have 10 things, say, on your to do list when you will never get them done. And when I tell people that you should have. If you have just one thing on your have to do list each day and you have a goal you're working toward, you know you'll get there in the end. Whereas if you have 10 things and you only get three done, you feel terrible and it creates this really vicious cycle. And then you have to add seven more things to tomorrow's to do list and they're never going to get done. And you're in this constant state of feeling bad. Whereas if you only have one thing on your to do list and you get it done, plus two more, you feel amazing. It could be the same three things, but resetting that anchor, reframing a little, can just totally change everything. I don't know that you have anything specifically about that, but that's how I talk about it. And then whatever thoughts you have to build on.

Yeah, I mean, directly to that question, I think one of the things I talk about in the book is this desire to display competence that we have. And this is a fundamental need for living things, humans in particular, but, or as we're talking about them now, but, and you know, so, so what that looks like is I, I, one of the stories I use in the book is bowerbirds. They're the, the birds that build these ceremonial nests, right? And the whole purpose of these nests is to attract a mate. But it's really, you know, why is the nest attracting a mate? And it's not that they're using it for shelter because even after the, the mating happens, the woman goes off and the female bowerbird goes off and builds a nest nest that provides shelter. So all this nest is doing is showing that the bird that built it is capable and can deal with the world. And we all kind of share that. We as humans, we want to display our competence too, right? And maybe it's not building nests or, you know, houses, although there is probably some element of that there. Or just my son playing with Legos right? I mean, part of the reasons he likes to do that is because it's showing that he can, he can do things, he can make these things. And so you say, well, okay, well, why does competence come from adding as opposed to subtracting? I mean, theoretically, by taking things away, you could show your competence in the world. And I think that actually ties nicely back into the condo example, right? I had to read the condo stuff because I was going around talking about our research and people said, well, this is like Marie Kondo. I knew who she was, but I'd never read her book. I was like, I better go read her book. And some of the advice is like, pretty sound scientifically, even though she takes a very like, spiritual approach to it. But she tells people, you know, one of the novel things about her method, I think, is that, hey, declutter completely, right? It's not like, oh, take one thing away every day for the next, you know, year, and then your house will be clean after a year. It's like, no, do this all in one weekend and you'll notice the difference, right? So she's helping people display competence through subtracting. Because if I just picked up, I'm looking around my office right now, and my son, who's now 6, will come in here and mess things up. And if I just pick up one thing, like, my wife is not going to notice my competence at picking up. But if I were to pick up this whole area, I can display competence through subtracting. So tying that back into your example, which I think one of the hardest ways to do this is with the kind of work tasks, right? I feel like the stop doings are. It's much harder to display competence by saying, okay, I'm not going to do this thing. Whereas if you have 10 things on your to do list, you might not be doing them well and it might make you feel miserable, but at least you've got 10 things on your to do list to show, hey, I'm dealing with the world. So I think that's a nice example actually of how like knowing a little bit more about the science, this, this desire for, for competence, right? And how that might kind of advantage adding. But. But once you know that, you can say, okay, well, competence doesn't mean we can also show competence by subtracting. We just have to. Might have to do more of it so that it's noticeable. And so, you know, I don't know, like, tying that. Your, your tip to have them do one thing is actually probably pretty, pretty good along Those lines. Right. Because if you just have one thing on your to do list that's kind of, that's noticeable. Right. That's a little radical where you think, oh, look at, look at Molina. She's only got one thing on her to do list. She must be like, you know, one of these like avant garde thinkers who can really. So I think that that's an example of kind of noticeable less that allows you to display, allows you to display competence.

Yeah, well, and in the way I set that up is. And I'll link to the episode at least I think I talked about this on multiple episodes, but I'll link to those in the show notes for everybody who's interested on. So you have to find your goal. And so if you say like this year the most important thing for me to do in my business is to write a book. Right. Or you know, and there's a lot of things that have to happen to be able to write a book, as we both know. And if that is my number one priority. And I sit down in advance and say when I look at my business and my life and my career, like this is number one. And there's a lot of other stuff that could be a really great distraction, some nice bike shedding techniques for me along the way. And I don't want to let them distract me. So then I sit down and I know that writing the book is so important and to say, like, these are all the things I need to do over the next 90 days to get this book moving. And I think out 90 different things and I assign one per day and then by the end I'm going to have my book done. You know, something along those lines to where, yes, I still have to answer emails, yes, I still have to teach classes, yes, I still have consulting work. But on this one thing that really matters, that I need to want to be able to look back at the end of the year and say, I did it, I made it. The book exists now. If you don't prioritize it from the get go and do, you know, a little bit at a time, sort of tortoise in the hare world, you know, it just probably won't get done. And you'll look back and say, man, I did a lot of busy work.

Yeah, I mean, and that's, I mean the, the challenge there too. That's where the stop doings come in. Right? It's like the. At some point you're, it becomes impossible to juggle your consulting and your classes and your, and your emails and the book. Right. And so it'. It's not a matter anymore of, okay, just saying no to more things that are coming in. It's a matter of actually stopping stuff that you're already doing. And I mean, that's a really, that's an insight that's in good to great Jim Collins's book. But it's, I mean, it's an example of this need to take stuff away. And I also think it ties back into your maybe definitely the difference here between minimalism and some of these other philosophies that can also be achieved by not doing anything thing. Right. It's like if you, you can be a minimalist by just not acquiring stuff. And I'm not saying that's, that's bad. I'm just saying that's not subtracting. Right? Subtracting is, oh, you've got all your stuff and now you're, you're going to get rid of it. Or subtracting is you've got your full schedule and now you're gonna take some stuff out of it so that you can get the stuff done that you actually want to get done.

So what's the, this is the point of like the big tip. Of course we would say, you know, get the book for, to really learn some of these things. But for everyone who's listening now and saying, yes, yes, I'm way over committed. I've got myself here now and I know that just not accepting new things isn't going to be enough. How does one start to subtract?

Yeah, I mean, buy the book and read it or just. I don't even care if you buy it. I just, But I do. Like, I purposely wrote the book to. One of the reasons, I think that we continue to have like the Marie Kondos, the Cal Newports, the essentialism. And this is all useful stuff. It's really useful and it's, but it's, it's evidence of this kind of underlying problem that left to our own devices, we're not going to think of, of taking away. Right. And you know, this goes all the way back to, you know, Da Vinci's idea of design perfection was there's nothing left to take away. Or Lao Tzu, 2 and a half millennia ago, talking about to, to gain wisdom, you have to subtract things every day. So we've had a hard time doing this for a long time. We've always needed people to remind us. I hope that my book kind of by understanding the science and you know, some of the stories in There like kind of intentionally designed to help rearrange people's mental furniture where you will think about subtraction across contexts that no kind of expert could, could prescribe for you. Right. Because nobody knows exactly what your situation is. But I think you can kind of go from the science and adapt it to your situation. So. And that really is the value proposition of the book. And you know, if you've got the time, that would be the, the one thing to do. But I think a good lesson is to subtract first. If you're going to pick one thing. I mentioned Eric Johnson before about, you know, who studies a lot about how people make decisions and you know, the order is very important. Right. I mean, if you subtract first, you're more likely to think about it in later situations. And what we've found in our research, right. Is that one of the most basic problems here is that people don't even think of it. Right. So if you are reminding yourself, okay, subtract first, then at least you're going to think of it. Which will get us over one major hurdle in this quest to use more of our options to make change. Is that a satisfactory answer, subtract first or is that too intuitive?

Well, I think it's definitely an important place to start to be on the lookout to know that we have a tendency not to do this and it's important to do so. I feel like one of the biggest hurdles that people have here might be as you even if you think about subtracting, but then, you know, as they say, nothing. I think this was a Kahneman quote, that nothing is as important as you think it is. And until you're focusing on it, until you're thinking about it and then that's where the loss aversion kicks in. You get some of that counterfactual and pre factual thinking of like, well, I'm going to want this and I've built up my career of people thinking that I do this one thing and if it go, I could just leave it in the background because I might want it later. You know, you get all this stuff going on in the brain and there's that kind of guilt and regret aversion maybe that's coming up. Do you have any advice on slaying those particular demons?

Yeah, and that's one of the mindset shifts I think that could be helpful to make generally. Right. Is this, I think there's this tendency to conflate less and loss basically. Right. And you know, when Kahneman's talking about Loss aversion, or when we're thinking about loss aversion, we're thinking about, okay, this is going to be bad, right? And then once you think the thing's going to be bad, you weigh it twice as much as you do, you know, kind of the gain. But less is not a loss as we're talking about it here, right? I mean, the whole premise is like, this is an improvement. This is. We're talking about. Certainly there's cases where less is a loss, but we're talking about the cases where taking away is actually going to make things better. And so I think reminding yourself that, you know, okay, this is an easy misunderstanding to have in your own thinking, right? Where it's like, okay, just because I'm not going to have this chair anymore means that's bad. It could just be that not having this chair anymore is actually going to make things better. And so that would help kind of get over this idea that less is always a loss, right? So that's one of the. Would be a really helpful mindset shift, I think, to make. I think the other one is the. The valence. And this goes back to Marie Kondo. But, you know, valence in chemistry is the, you know, attraction in the atoms and the electrons. And, but in. And then in behavioral science, right, The. The valence is how you're, you know, the, the emotion or the, the perception around an idea or concept, right? And subtract has a very negative valence. It's. It's seen as this bad thing. And, you know, so what Marie Kondo does is, you know, emphasizes the spark joy, right? That's arguably the, the genius. And what she's done, it's like getting rid of this is going to spark joy. So she avoids. She avoids this negative balance that could potentially be around subtraction. And I think that's a really helpful shift that, that all of us can make. And then the last one, this other kind of mindset shift that I hope the book helps people make is we tend to think of add and subtract as, like, opposites. Like, choose one and you can't have the other, right? So I still get people who, when I'm talking about this, they'll be like, well, adding's good sometimes. Like, of course, adding is good sometimes. And it's probably, you know, most. Maybe more. Even more of the time, adding is better. I'm just saying that it's a shame that we don't consider both of them. And I think part of the problem there maybe is that we Position them as opposites. And, you know, that's something we naturally do in our reasoning, right? It's like you position two concepts as opposite and then, you know, if, like one, one is true, then the other is not true. And that's helpful except for when the things aren't actually opposites. And as we're talking about them here, they're just complementary ways to make change. Right. If so, if we started to think like, okay, I added to this situation and it made it better, maybe I should think about subtracting from this situation. That might make it better too, as opposed to, you know, what I think might happen is we think, okay, I added to this and it got better. That means that subtracting can't possibly be an option, right? So, so the mind, this mindset shift from add or subtract to add and subtract, I think could, could help quite a bit. It would also help with that fundamental oversight that we found in our research. Right? Because if you're not thinking of subtraction, but if you're, if then you all of a sudden are thinking add and subtract when you, when you, your first instinct is to add, then maybe subtraction would come to mind more quickly after that.

Yeah, well, as you were just talking there, it was really making me think too of the, the physics of it all, right? In this, subtracting something means you're adding something else somewhere else, even if you're not considering it. And same adding something means you're losing something else somewhere. The kind of basic example in this where they say, in whether it's life or business to, you know, saying yes to something means you're saying no to everything else. And we don't necessarily think about all the things we're saying no to along that because our, you know, our time is now compromised. I can't do anything else because I said yes to the thing. But it feels like you don't think about all the things you say no to in the same way of when you add something, you know, it's taking away space or it's taking away something to where you couldn't do something else in the future if you had thought about maybe subtraction in this other way.

Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting and very true, I think. So that might be a really helpful thing to kind of shift the framing around when you're arguing for subtraction or when you're trying to get people to think of subtraction. It's like help them think about the thing that they're added elsewhere. And I guess back to Kondo, she does that a little bit, right? She has people envision the clean sense space that you're going to have, right? And then that becomes the thing that you're scared of losing. So it kind of flips what the, what the loss is, right? So, so when she says, okay, envision this clean room, and then you fail to declutter, you've. You've lost this clean room. And that, you know, as we know, like, losses loom larger than gains. And so that kind of, that's helpful. I also think, you know, we've talked a lot about these kind of systematic disadvantages for taking away. And I think that, you know, what you just mentioned is a really systematic advantage for taking away. Right? It's like when we add something, we're left with the original situation plus whatever we've added. When we take something away, we're left with an improved original situation plus that thing that we took away, which we can like, use somewhere else. Right? Like we can.

Right.

The example that I use in the book is donut holes, because it took forever to think to subtract the middle from donuts to make them, you know, cook more evenly. And also you can like, fit more sugar on them and stuff. But then it's a nice example of like, okay, once you have subtracted, you've got that donut hole left over, right? And you can do something with that. You can, you can sell it. It's kind of the example of, you know, if you subtract something from your, from your to do list, then all of a sudden you've got, you've got space. So, so yeah, I love that. I'm going to use it.

Awesome. Well, I appreciate for, for the guy who, who wrote the book on subtracting that. I thought I made a point that helped you think. Oh, I didn't think about it that way yet.

Right.

So I think that's always fun.

I thought you were going to go. When people bring up the physics, the, like. I've talked to some physicists about this as a result of the Nature paper, and they're interested in, like, entropy. They say, well, you know, maybe. Maybe this is like a result of humans being around entropy for so long that, you know, we just kind of. The natural evolution of things is adding complexity. But anyway, so I thought. So I was. I liked that your physics example went in a slightly different and more practical direction.

I think the. You assume a level of physics knowledge that I do not employ to where I Could not have made that particular leap. And I'm going super basics, but I'm glad that it worked out.

Oh, no, I. I knew about it from engineering and, like, there was a. There's a deleted section of the book that was like, trying to make the connection because it's too. It's too philosophical and it's not. There's no, like, practical ramification of it. So anyway.

Oh, all the things that make it to the, you know, the editing graveyard, I guess, where it's like, no, I have to have this in the book.

And then.

But if you didn't subtract that out, it would have made for, I'll say, a worse book. But there's a lot of value that came from pulling something somewhat erroneous that felt important to you but wasn't adding value at the time.

Yeah, talk about hard, right? I mean, we talked about this desire to show competence. And I mean, there's no, you know, when you've written something and then to take it out. That is a really hard thing.

In my own book process, I have a whole Trello board of. When I would pull sections that I would copy and paste it all somewhere to where I knew where it came from. And if something changes and I have to go add it back, I didn't lose it. It's not totally gone. It's just living somewhere else right now. And then I have to read it without it and see if it feels like there was something missing. And there never is. It always gets more clear kind of as you go through that process.

Yeah, I have the exact same thing. Well, not exactly the same. It's not a Trello board, but I have an excerpts file. And it's like, that is never going to see the light of day. But it made me feel so much better when I was taking stuff out of the book. So it's like, oh, maybe I will use these 40,000.

It could be an article someday.

Yeah, yeah. That's just never, never opening it again, probably.

Yeah, but you have it, you know, someday you'll delete it. And it's not adding value to your life and whatnot. But, yeah, it helps you get through the process. Well, thank you so much for everyone who is super excited about getting the book. Of course there will be a link in the show notes. What are other ways if somebody does want to follow you? Get in touch, whatever. What are the best options for that?

Yeah, I'm on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can find my email on the Internet too. I like talking about this stuff. So that's been one of the most fun things about writing the book is getting to kind of expand the network of people who I get to talk about these ideas with. Like you, Melina.

So yeah, absolutely. Well, I love it. We will definitely have links to your Twitter, your LinkedIn to the book. It'll all be there waiting for everyone in the show.

Notes.

So thank you so much again for joining me today to talk about the importance of subtracting first and not just following our adding instincts.

Great. Terrific to be here.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about how to subtract today? For me, I've always loved Lydie's statement that less is not a loss when we think about loss aversion. My top recommended next episode for you to listen to after this one and the way we humans approach all our lives and opportunities and all of what we've always done and how hard it.

Can be to let go.

It's just so important to remember this and keep it in mind. One recent interview that comes to mind for me where this came up was in my conversation with Scott Miller on the Ultimate Guide to Great Mentorship where we talk about starting a mentor relationship and potentially being hesitant to do so because of that fear that you might be stuck with this person forever. Why is the default that we start things and they go on in perpetuity and you can never get rid of anything but you just have to keep adding more and more and more? Let's let go of that, shall we? In addition to that episode with Scott, I've also linked to my other recent episode with Vanessa Patrick discussing her book the Power of Saying no to help you identify when to say no and ways to do it better so people don't hate you. Very important skills in there to be sure. And of course I'm linking to my conversation with Nir Eyal about his book Indistractable and how you can eliminate distractions to get more of the right stuff done. And that brings me to this upcoming Friday's episode with Marcy Rader and her book Work well, Play More, which takes a lot of what I loved about Indistractable and just dials it up like 50 notches. Marcy has broken down habits into three areas, productivity, clutter and health and combine them all together in a 12 month approach where you can work to get little improvements in each of them and see massive value and ability to reclaim time and mental well being and so much more across all areas of your life. It is such a wonderful book and I can't wait to share our conversation with you this coming Friday. If you aren't already subscribed to the Brainy Business podcast, take a moment to do so now to be sure you get that episode and every other one right when they come out. And of course, don't forget about the show notes to check out those related past episodes. Books like Subtract Work well, Play More, Indistractable and the Power of Saying no, as well as a timestamp summary of the episode and more. It's all waiting for you in the show notes atthe brainy business.com 322 and just like that, episode 322 on Subtract with Lydie Klotz is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Marci Rader to discuss her book Work well, Play More. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit the brainybusiness.com.