How would you change each of these shapes above to make them symmetrical? Think about it for a minute, I'll wait.
What did you come up with? If you're like me (and according to this article, like most humans) you would add squares until the shapes match. But did you consider subtracting squares?
This is a great illustration of easy vs simple: the additive solution came easily, but adds complexity to the shapes. The subtractive solution simplifies things, but it takes more consideration... at least until you've internalized being on the lookout for subtractive solutions.
We can apply this to many areas of our lives, but we have a few things going against us when we miss simple subtractive solutions:
- Previous experience. We've seen many more examples where the solution involved adding instead of removing. As we think of more subtractive solutions, our previous experience starts to shift.
- Sunk cost fallacy. We've already paid for this stuff (with money, time, etc.) so we don't want to take it away! If you can improve things by taking something away, let it go.
- It feels less creative. It's right there in the word. If we're not creating something, are we really contributing? Absolutely.
A couple places I've noticed this in my own life: code review and visual design.
When writing code, the tendency is to add more code to solve a problem, when it might make things simpler to remove some code. It generally improves readability and maintainability 1 . It might be easier too, but it usually requires zooming out and looking at the code more holistically.
In design, white space is powerful. Apple figured out a long time ago that it's possible to simplify and draw more attention by removing than by adding.
Where are areas in your life where you might be able to make things better by subtracting?
1: Of course there are limits to this. When you get into code golf territory, readability generally suffers.
