Take Something Away

Summary

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Ryan McFarland came from a long line of motorsports junkies given that his grandfather had been a race car engineer and his father ran a motorbike store. As a result, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that McFarland grew up riding dirt bikes and stockcars, or that he eventually went into the family business as well. It also shouldn’t come as a surprise that he was eager to pass on the McFarland “love of wheels” to his own son. As any parent knows, getting a young child to ride a bike is a significant challenge. McFarland’s experience was no different. So, like many of us, he purchased an endless number of things to help his son get riding — toddler tricycles, trainer bikes, and even a training wheel equipped motorcycle. Nothing worked. More importantly, each failed to teach his son the most important part of riding a bike — learning how to balance. Think about it. While training wheels or a tricycle might stabilize a rider, neither allow a kid to equalize their weight on a bike. The reason? The extra wheels do all…

Highlights from Article

The answer is simple — human nature and incentives. The fact is, people are biased towards solving problems through addition rather than subtraction. The reason? Because adding something makes you feel like you are advancing, while taking something away makes you feel like you are retreating. Couple this with the fact that most companies are incentivized to sell us endless “solutions”, and it should come as no surprise that the desire take something away is practically non-existent.

• We tend to fix things with fixes, not removals.

“If you want to make a software project take longer, add more people to it. This is based on the premise that when you are developing a complex system, smaller teams who complete each others’ sentences, each own part of the system, truly understand it, and work in unison create a magical, yet fragile, dynamic. This is the case because adding more people means more bureaucracy, which risks disempowering some of your best people and slowing things down. Just look at Healthcare.gov as a perfect example.”

• Fewer people working on something is more.

Think about it this way. What would happen if you reduced the number of things you focus on in your daily life by 20%? How about 30%?? Say 50%???

• Increased focus on fewer things is almost always better.

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