Richard and Maurice were running a barbeque restaurant in Los Angeles, but it wasn’t doing very well. So they took a brief break to decide what to do.

They audited their sales receipts to see which products were selling more. Once they found out, they wondered: why don’t we focus on these products that are doing well? So, courageously, they slashed their menu from 25 items to a mere 9.

That’s when “McDonald’s Barbeque” actually started growing. The McDonald brothers could improve their food and reduce their costs by reducing their product line. And serve more customers per hour! That’s how Ray Kroc got interested in partnering with the brothers and franchising McDonald’s.

Subtraction is the key to excellence.

Ask a good chef how to make the soup more flavourful, and he’ll tell you to add a few more spices to it. But ask a great chef how to make the soup more flavourful, and he will tell you to boil away excess water.

Ask any Pulitzer prize-winning author, and they will tell you that the art of editing is more important than the art of writing.

Why does subtraction work?

As James Clear says:

There are two paths to improvement”

Option 1: Do more great work.

Option 2: Do less bad work.

Doing less of what is not working intensifies our focus on doing more of what is working. And that is why subtraction helps us succeed faster. By subtracting the inessential, we enable the essential to shine much brighter.

Adding is easier. Subtracting is not.

And that’s because we are hard-wired to add.

Leidy Klotz and his colleagues from the University of Virginia have conducted various experiments that prove that we humans are inclined towards addition.

When an incoming University president asked for ideas to improve things on campus, only 11% of the suggestions involved getting rid of something. Instead, 89% of requests were geared towards adding and doing new things.

In a study where college students were asked to improve their essays and resubmit them, only 17% did so by removing parts of them. 83% of the essays had a higher word count.

Takeaway

• Subtract the inessential to intensify your focus on what works best.
• Add monthly reminders to your calendar with a prompt question: “What can I subtract from my workload to focus on core projects?”