Subtraction Action
Chop, chop: how subtraction could add value to your copy (and your life)
Nobody likes losing. I think that’s why, as a species, we get so caught up in the pursuit of more.
Humans are so instinctively afraid of losing that it means we have an inherent bias against subtraction.
Nerds call it additive bias. I stumbled across the idea in this video, which gave me both Lego nostalgia and a sudden brainwave about creative problem-solving.
Think about it: which do you find easier, addition or subtraction? Which one do you find more interesting?
Which is more positive - literally, and which is more negative? Even the symbols reinforce our bias.
It turns out we’ve got a big blindspot when it comes to solving problems. Because you see, for all our brains, we suck at solving problems where the answer is to take something away.
That might go some way to explain why so many of us love simple, clean ideas. They seem somehow harder to achieve. We subconsciously appreciate the skill it must take to cut away, even if we don’t really know that’s what’s happening.
“For the simplicity that lies this side of complexity, I would not give a fig.
But for the simplicity that lies on the other side of complexity I would give my life”.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Puff adders
On the other hand, additive bias could also explain why grifters and “intellectuals” love making things more complicated than they need to be.
Think about, oh, for example…Jordan Peterson. If you’ve ever heard the guy speak, you’ll know what I mean.
Or perhaps Russell Brand, whose appeal was largely a kind of naughty pseudo-philosophical locquaciousness that, in its purest form, created a mirage, if you will, of perspicacity that, in the eyes of the casual viewer or perhaps the powers that be, the man, the establishment, could be seen to be discrepant vis-a-vis his eclectic rockstar bohemian aesthetic.
Adding stuff - words, complexity, bullshit - is a pretty effective way of making yourself look smart, and therefore make your ideas look smarter.
But it doesn’t last, and I think that’s for one simple reason:
It makes your ideas very difficult to repeat.
Extra sticky
One thing I think is missing from Chip & Dan Heath’s “sticky ideas” framework is repeatability.
Sure, it’s woven into a few of the principles, but I think it needs more attention. Because a lot of great, sticky ideas are expressed in a way that makes it easy for us to repeat to others. They’re expressed so beautifully that the words can change but the message is clear.
Or perhaps it’s simply easy to quote it to someone, like a great tagline or a proverb.
But if your idea is wrapped up in a bunch of complex language, or it interweaves a bunch of complex theories, or it takes an entire podcast episode to ‘explore’, you might have a problem.
When you speak or write in a way that dances on the edge of comprehensibility, you’ll come across as smart. Your audience has to do some work to make sense of what you’re saying, and they’ll waver between feeling stupid and feeling smart.
And once they’re in that zone, you’ve got a lot of power. Skilful bullshitters - cult leaders, Peterson, Brand, any number of self-help gurus and manfluencers - know how to use that power. They know how to keep their audience engaged by adding more and more, luring them in further with the promise of moving from stupid to smart.
But when it comes to repeating those ideas, things come unstuck. Because if they really like your idea and want to tell someone else, the best they can say is “oh man, you should check out his YouTube channel” or “did you hear his Joe Rogan interview?”.
Which means that, in the end, your audience doesn’t remember your ideas: they remember you.
And while that might work (…) for celebrities, that’s not what we creative problem solvers want at all.
How to practise subtraction
Like any skill, it’s something you need to work at. Here are a few exercises I recommend is one thing to practise:
Cut Too Deep.
Take something you’ve written and hack it to pieces. Take out all of the fluff. Go beyond bare bones. Remove whole chunks. Make unreadable. Break.
Then, add. Word by word. Until every word works.
You shouldn’t always write like this. But it’s worth seeing just how much you can cut away and still get the idea across.
It’s not revolutionary advice. I am not claiming anything like it.
But I do find it useful as a lens, because sometimes being told to cut things away just feels like a maxim, a thing we’re supposed to do, rather than as a technique we can use and master.
Reframe editing as a problem to be solved, and subtraction as a tool, we’re that little bit closer to mastery.
It also frees us up to make big controversial calls. Forget cutting every ‘that’: what if you just lop off that whole paragraph? In fact, what about the whole idea: how much fat could you trim from it before it starts to look a little wan?
On the other side of that coin, this is not to say that everything can be solved by subtraction. We need a clear eye on the purpose: subtracting for style can mean you never actually say what you need to say. There might be times where you need to add new bits, add depth, add detail.
But try this: make subtraction the first tool you reach for. Wield it on anything you write today. Cut it back to its bare minimum, and then see what you have to work with.
Chances are, you’ll be moving away from what you want to say and closer to what your reader needs to read.
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery