I’m surrounded by clutter. Stacks of books that I don’t even pretend I’ll read. Clothes that have hung in the same place for two years. A rundown building down the street, seemingly abandoned. I think I’d prefer if there were fewer things in all of these settings. Even so, new things get added - another book, another shirt, another building - and we don’t remove old ones. 

The clutter is clearest at work. Not in physical space but in digital space and time. The effects are exacerbated when a group of people collaborate. Rarely will a document, ritual, or meeting be deleted, but every day, something is added to the growing pile. You blink and suddenly you’re overwhelmed with pointless meetings, stale documents, and rituals whose purposes are long forgotten. If you keep adding to a pile without ever removing anything, you’ll soon be crushed under its weight. 

Why is it so prevalent at work? I think it has to do with the fact that you’re collaborating with a group of people. Members of the group want to contribute and, usually, the bar to add something (creating a document, inviting to a meeting) is not very high. You don’t need consensus; you can just create things. But to delete something, you need consent from everyone. Perhaps decisions made by committees are worse when it comes to deleting than creating. On top of this dynamic, cutting someone else’s work can come across as critiquing someone’s work or preventing them from contributing, further disincentivizing subtracting or deleting in group settings.

I’m trying to shift my perspective on this. I think of the (apocryphal?) Churchill quote, “If I had more time, I’d write a shorter letter,” and even the Michelangelo quote about removing marble to reveal the perfect sculpture already present in the slab of stone. Getting something perfectly right from the beginning is an impossible task. Subtracting is an essential step, enabling us to get from a messy, sprawling, excessive starting point to a simpler, clearer, and better answer. Even if social norms or committees try to push us towards adding, adding, and adding some more, I’m going to put my own energy towards subtracting.