Greg McKeown:
Welcome everyone. I’m your host, Greg McKeown, and I am on this journey with you to learn to be able to apply less but better into every aspect of our lives so that, overall, we can achieve more without burning out, so that we can operate at a higher point of contribution but to do it in an effortless way. And speaking of less, remember the Less but Better course that you can take completely for free, designed, thoughtfully, curated for you. You just go to gregmckeown.com it’s on the homepage. It takes you 10 seconds to sign up. You’ll get a high-quality workbook plus a 30-day email course helping you not just to understand these ideas in general but to be able to put them into action immediately. Where do you start on this journey of higher contribution? That’s what the Less but Better course is all about.
This is part two of my conversation with Leidy Klotz, who’s a professor and also the author of Subtract. One of the things I loved about part one, and we continue this in today’s episode, is how much research Leidy has at his fingertips To be able to not just make these statements that we have learned by experience to be true but also to have the data to back it up, to encourage us on this journey, this disciplined pursuit of less. Let’s get to it.
I think this is an important, as important an insight into the subject of subtraction and simplification more generally that there is. It’s that you have to start by subtracting. It’s simplification first. It’s “Start with zero”; it’s not “Let’s see if we can just tweak at the end.” That is a form of simplification and it’s a very important kind. But there’s this other, more monumental shift in the mindset where you’re looking at the world with a lens of simplification, where you’re suspect and suspicious of adding, and that doesn’t mean you never add, but you just always put it through that gate first, question the requirements first, just because something is being sold to you. Right, we have been sold the benefits of every kind of technology for the last. I mean I don’t know, you could say since the industrial revolution, but I mean digital technology over the last something like 30 years. And with every technological innovation, there are people incentivized to sell that additional thing to you, that additional complexity. And this is better, and CDs are better than vinyl, and well, cassettes were better than the vinyls, and then CDs were better, and then Apple iTunes was better, and then Apple Music is better, and I’m like, “No, I’m done with this now.”
I mean, of course, everyone now loves vinyl again, but I think maybe it will happen for the other technologies too, because I don’t prefer these new technological systems.
But my real point is that we’re oversold constantly on the value of more, newer. All of this is better, and if we don’t have a heightened sensitivity to it right from the beginning, then we just sign up for a whole lifestyle that, to be honest, I am increasingly frustrated with.
So the segue here is in a world that does have all this data coming at us constantly, at our fingertips and phones, endlessly with us, those constraints that come with it, like what can people do listening to this? They’re successful, they’re driven, they’re capable people. They’re probably still running out of space, still pursuing too many things, but how can they operationalize practically subtraction in their life?
Leidy Klotz:
Yeah, I think starting with subtraction is great, I think, and it sounds so simple. But the reason it’s really important the order, because you know where did we start from? Which was we don’t even think about subtraction. Right, that’s a problem that we need to address. If you have a rule to start with subtraction, you’ve immediately fixed that problem; you’ve immediately helped with thinking about it. And it also helps with the competence, right, like this, this desire, to show that you’re competent.
So imagine if you could have a company that where, like, the ethos is to take things away, and I know, I mean, there are companies that are working towards this. Then, the person is showing competence by taking things away. If you’ve got this, this rule or this practice to start with subtraction.
So I think you know. If there’s one thing I would just but, the order is really important, you know, even things like start, stop, continue, right, people will say, oh, that’s an example of subtraction. It’s like, yeah, but you’ve thought about the things you should start before you’ve gone down to the things that actually matter. Right, you should subtract first because then you might not want to add the same things, or maybe you don’t even need to add them at all after you subtract. So starting with it is amazing. I think that would be the number one go-to for people.
Greg McKeown:
So let’s stay with that rule because I like that, and that’s enough for us to riff on. But let’s talk and perhaps it’s a brainstorm. But practical things, people can do to subtract first. I just talked to somebody the other day who had a rule that he would eliminate, like get rid of 10 items every Saturday. Oh, that’s awesome Into his model. I thought that was a very nice, you know, tangible, achievable thing.
Leidy Klotz:
Yeah, I don’t want to be too prescriptive, but I think people can take these examples and adopt them to their own life. I think the common theme in them, though, is that sit down after listening to this podcast, or even while you’re listening to this podcast, and say where are the time, what are my key decision points in life, where are the times when I’m making decisions that matter, and then how can I build subtracting first into that routine?
So you just gave the example of people taking a guy taking 10 things away every Saturday. That’s perfect, right. I’m gonna, every Saturday, take 10 things away. When you’re doing your to-do list for the week, right? How can you force yourself to have an equal amount, or even more? Stop doings and start with those stop doings. That’s another example.
Greg McKeown:
So something I have found very helpful for that is to have a single master “said no to” list.
Leidy Klotz:
Oh, that’s awesome. Do you keep it?
Greg McKeown:
Yes, and so, I just, I mean, I’m a fan of paper and pen planning. I still have it, like I literally have it in front of me, because I bring it with me almost everywhere I go, and so I have like a page in here, and every time I say no, or certainly every time I say no to something that’s at all major you know, medium to major I write it down. I do it for two reasons: One, because then it allows me to evaluate it later. I can look at it and say, okay, you said no to that. You probably should have said yes to it, you know. So, you learn from that decision-making process. But also, I do it as an empowering tool because, you see, you can no, and so not such novices at it still that that I find it encouraging in that way.
Leidy Klotz:
Well, I’d also say that I have a friend who does this with when she says no to things, and she puts a block on her. She uses digital. She puts a block on her Google calendar, and what it does for her is when she’s writing, which is kind of her highest-value activity, she’s reminded of the fact that, hey, this writing time is brought to you by saying no to this other task. Right, so it’s really cool.
Greg McKeown:
I love that idea that when you say no to it, you actually block it, and you say, see, I was going to do this, but now I’m able to do that. I really like that. I really like that.
Leidy Klotz:
We talked about legislation. I’d be remiss if there’s a one-in, two-out rule that I think you could think about how it applies in other places, too, right? So if somebody wants to propose a new piece of legislation or just a new rule in your organization or some new thing that you know my academic department is going to do, then say, okay, well, what are the two things that we’re already doing that we should discuss, not doing right?
And you, you bump them together so that, and it’s just for discussion. You don’t have to definitely get rid of them. But now, when we’re discussing adding something, we’re discussing what we can stop doing to make space for it, which I think that’s a really kind of elegant way to make it part of your practice.
Greg McKeown:
I have rarely seen people do this. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad suggestion, and I’m not. I wasn’t implying that. Something I have actually seen work again. I’m not suggesting yours doesn’t. I haven’t seen people successfully.
Leidy Klotz:
No, it’s funny because as soon as it came out of my mouth, I was like yeah, like it sounds so simple. But you know I haven’t implemented it in my work. I do it in my life, but maybe that’s the next research project.
Greg McKeown:
Why is that?
Leidy Klotz:
So hard to implement.
Greg McKeown:
For sure. That’s an interesting piece of research. Now, there’s something I have actually seen. An organization that got really serious about asking this question, with transformative results, was somebody who said they introduced this question. What do you have to say no to, to say yes to this request from me?
Leidy Klotz:
Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s great.
Greg McKeown:
So what they did, they had this hypothesis that said, I mean, this is like a real sort of research, real time experiment. They said, well, look, if Essentialism is true, then we ought to be able to achieve more with less inputs, the same, or more outputs with less inputs. And so the tangible challenge they said is, “OK, what if we move to a four-day work week? Could we still have the same output?”
And they did it for three months. They wrote all you know, they’ve written up their results in multiple places, and they were able to do it. They increased productivity by 20%. They moved officially to a four-day work week and it was this cool case study.
But that was the thing that they primarily changed was the introduction of that conversation, because it’s not like other conversations. In fact, I felt ridiculous when I first learned about this because I didn’t realize that nobody was having that conversation. I thought people weren’t having that conversation enough. But what I learned was it’s not even happening. So we all know and have regular conversations about addition. That’s just an email. “Hey, can you do this?”
Well, now it got added. Okay, now I did it. Or I asked you another question, and we move forward. So we are very practiced in the art of having additional conversations, but novices at conversations about subtraction conversations, and so that question to me seemed to be poignant and really effective for them.
Leidy Klotz:
Yeah, I like the conversation framing. I mean, it’s one of those things where you say rules; it’s really like my two-in, two-out, one-in rule. It’s like really easy to envision that because it’s very concrete, but the and the conversation conversations are a little more like kind of, yeah, it’s just, you’re hoping that that happens, that there’s not like necessarily a perfect script for it. But I think you’re right. I like I think that you know that’s how. That’s how ideas spread right, not by dictate, but by people talking about them. I mean, it brings to mind an example.
Like one of my friends is a vice Melanie Frank. She’s a vice president at Capital One, and her example of doing this was just talking. She manages software teams, and she just asks them like, what do I need to help you stop doing, right? What do I need to help take off your plate so that you can be effective at the things that you wanna do? And it’s a conversation, it’s not some policy or, you know, it’s just. But you could imagine, yeah, and then those conversations spread right If I now she said it to me, I said it to you, and you know, I’m sure everybody that she says that to them thinks about saying it to the people that are working for them. So I think that that you know just that. It’s also something strikes me about that that you’re you’re giving permission to somebody else to do it, which is kind of an interesting take on it. Right, it’s a, it’s a general, you’re making subtraction, the option to do this. You’re being generous about it, which is kind of nice.
Greg McKeown:
So, and this idea that well, the idea that subtraction in practice includes intercommunication, interaction with others, I think is a really necessary shift because, at least in my work with essentialism and effortless, I find that people immediately have this question, and that is well how. I mean. They’re really always asking, “Well, how do I do it in the real world?”
But what they mean by it primarily is, “How do I do it in the world of people?”
So even if they say, well, I know what my priority is today, or I know what my priority this week is, and it’s like, yeah, but then you’re going to hit into the reality of people, and they, even in the best case scenario, they will only they’ll know their priority, and that won’t necessarily be the same as yours.
So, even if they’re personally clear, you’re going to, and then, of course, in reality, they have 50 different things, and their hair’s on fire, and they’re in a whirlwind, and you probably are too, and so the reality of the noise and complexity that comes while interacting with people. I think any solution on these themes that doesn’t include this is a necessary but insufficient level of solution. We have to find ways to be able to work together with others in simplifying those things that are either just simply too complex, too costly, or just non-essential in the first place. What other interpersonal skills have you come across?
Leidy Klotz:
Well, I think that permission one. I haven’t necessarily. I think the permission and the conversation like one thing that strikes me as one reason people wouldn’t subtract right; if I think about in my department, for example, you go to a department meeting and like when I first came here, you know there’s things that look like they’re ridiculous and you’re like why are we doing this? But you’d be a, you’d feel like a jerk to to question it. Right, it’s, it’s really, it’s obnoxious because you don’t understand how, how everything works yet, and most likely, like the thing that you’re questioning somebody has may have some tie to. So you end up not even having the conversation.
And I think that might be why the permission works, right? Because you’re or the conversation, it, it, it helps with that challenge, and that’s like. That’s not a situation where the person, where you’re like trying to just hold onto your fiefdoms, you’re just, you’re trying to help everything be better, but you don’t want to do it because you don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings. And by inviting the conversation now, you’re not hurting people’s feelings. You’re just, you know, you’re just talking about it. So I think that that that can be helpful in in getting over it in the real world. I really think that you know, at the level of these kinds of cultural-like mindsets, right, you’re shifting people’s mindsets towards subtracting being OK.
Greg McKeown:
Well, it just is bringing to mind this sort of it’s helpful to start with an ideal case, and it’s hard to get better, I think, than Johnny Ive and Steve Jobs and what they’ve allowed us to be privy to about those conversations. They were meeting pretty much every day for lunch for 10 years so that they could talk, exploring what’s the one thing and, of course, Jobs is famous for this idea of we’ve got to say no to a thousand things, say yes to one thing. Right, we’ve all heard that idea, but a mutual friend of ours, Jeremy Utley. It was when he and I were talking on this podcast that we suddenly both realized, well, that is all about saying no. That’s that quote we all hear, that’s the part we all hear, but it’s also about having a thousand things to say no to. So clearly, there’s a huge role for ideation in this.
So, coming into now this conversation that they would have, Johnny Ive shared a question that Steve asked him frequently, and I think this goes right to the heart of giving people permission and creating a culture of subtraction. He would ask him what have you said no to recently? And so Johnny would say, “Well, you know, I said no to this or that.” And Jobs would push back on him and say, “Well, you didn’t even want to do those things. That’s not, that’s nothing. I mean, what have you said no to that hurt? That was hard to say no to. You know that you really, really wanted to do, but you still said no to it.”
And I do think that that’s a question that I’m going to, of course, come back to. I mean, it’s inherent, I suppose, in essentialism and the spirit of being an essentialist, but it’s one that I need to refresh and re-enthrone in my own life and my own work. Saying it to my team, saying it to my wife, asking her to say it to me, because I’m really guilty of this. What have we said no to recently? Let’s really keep pushing ourselves so that there is space to breathe into the things that really matter. Give us the final word.
Leidy Klotz:
No, I mean, I think that fits into the conversation, too. And now, when you’re talking about, like, making this a conversation, one organization I talked to, they built this into their annual reviews, and it was effectively just saying like what, what are you going to stop doing this year, right? And so now everybody’s basically having that the benefit of that lunchtime conversation where it’s like no, like what is it? What are you going to do? How can you be, how can you be more ambitious with that? So I think that’s you know. I just really like that framing of it. I think one last thing I would say is, you know, you mentioned till it hurts, right? And people will often ask, “Well, how do you know if you subtracted too much?”
And it’s like we so rarely subtract too much, right? It’s like it’s how. It’s not bad if, for some, if you subtract something and realize that you want to add it back, right? It’s like that would be an indication that we’re subtracting enough. Yeah, like okay, yeah, we, we went down below, and now we’re like, oh no, we need to put that, a piece of that back in, and but the number of times that that happens compared to the number of times that we’re like, “Oh, we, I want to say no to so many things and eliminate so many things that I do think I did too many.”
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. That’s a problem that nobody has. Although, contradicting that for a tiny moment, that is what Musk is going for. He says, “I want to say no to so many things and eliminate so many things that I do think I did too many.”
Now, this is a controversial example, I suppose, in a lot of ways, or at least it’s certainly been seen that way by lots of people. But when he takes over Twitter and eliminates an enormous amount of staff, and inelegantly, I don’t think anybody can disagree that it was done inelegantly, but this idea of at some point in that process, he goes, “Oh okay, we kind of went too far on this. We need, we need someone who does that again, we need somebody who does this.”
He certainly wanted to get to that point. He wasn’t trying not to get to that line. He wanted to get to it because then he knows what the line is. And he then goes, “Okay, yeah, we eliminated too much, we got rid of too many requirements, we said no to too many things. Okay, now we know.”
If you don’t get to that point, you simply do not know and you’re just guessing all the time in your life as to whether something is necessary.
Leidy Klotz:
Yeah, no, it’s a good example. I mean, it’s true, like that is exactly an example of what I just mentioned. I wonder if there’s a way to do it without putting people’s. I mean, even just from the organizational standpoint, there’s obviously collateral damage to the reputation, people’s desire to work there. So, could you somehow do that without laying people off? Right, you get down to where you think it’s you’re close to the line, and then you just tell people right, you get down to where you think you’re close to the line, and then you just tell people, “All right, everybody gets a vacation every Friday. We’re going to see how much we really need here.”
I don’t know. That’s why I’m not running a big company.
Greg McKeown:
No, no, I mean sure. I mean, look, the Twitter example is challenging for people because there are political overtones involved, right and so, and not just even overtones, right? Like it’s right at the heart of, you know, what people are allowed to say and not allowed to say, and left versus right and so on so that massively complicates our ability to see what the simple elimination of people did because everything was seen through that bigger lens and I’m not myself in favor of this kind of slashing efficiency consultants who come in. Well, we’ll just get rid of this and get rid of that. And I mean, to me, that’s not Essentialism, that’s like no-ism or something, but the principle is still there. It doesn’t mean you can’t be also kind or also thoughtful, but nevertheless, the idea is you want to keep going until you see the pinch of it, until you think, “Oh, it was a bit too much. We simplified a bit too much.”
You want to be on that side of it because, as we’ve already established, addition is the easy part. So, okay, you can add something back.
Leidy Klotz:
Well, let’s move it into the example of our everyday lives, right and where the like. If you simplify so much that now you’ve got an hour of free time that you don’t know what to do with, that’s a really easy problem to solve, right? Now you can pick up a new project, and you know so, yeah. But we don’t. When has anybody ever been in that situation? Right?
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, and when did anyone ever describe it as a problem? “My goodness, I have power every day now. What did I do?”
It’s such a fun conversation to riff on with you, and I’ve enjoyed it so much. Thank you, really Thank you, for being on the show today.
Leidy Klotz:
Yeah, well, thank you, Greg. I, just, you know, really appreciate the ideas that you’ve put out into the world. I think of my job as creating and sharing ideas, and you know yours have been influential to me and so many people. And that’s, you know. That’s all we got, so thank you.
Greg McKeown:
For everybody listening. What is one thing that you heard today that you can put into action, and by that, I mean put into subtraction? You know what’s one thing that you can eliminate from your life, from the physical things around you? What’s one idea that stands with you that you can now implement to the benefit and simplification and subtraction so that you can learn to breathe again? Who is one person that you can share this with? How can you continue this conversation now that this conversation has come to a close? Thank you, really thank you, for listening.
