Take It Away

take it away

Take it Away

February 20

Good morning, friend.

In life, the crowning achievement tends to go to the person who added. The inventor, the writer, the team that released the new product.

Because of this, we usually build our lives around the principles of addition. Selfishly or purely, we look to add to the world around us—maybe working to add to our own salaries, or add word count to a novel, or add a few more workouts to the week.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s only half the battle. Because all of these great things listed above aren’t just products of addition, but of subtraction.

Mark Twain famously said, “I wrote you a long letter today, because I didn’t have time to write you a short one.” He wasn’t just being sarcastic—he was stating, in other words, that he’d only had time to do the addition, not the subtraction. The process of editing that refines every great work of writing into what we discuss today.

Wherever we start life, we want to go up—that requires addition. But when we just begin in any enterprise, we have no idea what we’re doing. We have to try a ton of stuff to make any progress. And only a small fraction of what we do when we start works.

Of course, a tiny fraction is enough, if we keep at it. But we keep the baggage: things that either never worked, or worked once and no longer serve us.

It’s why in any endeavor, it’s worth asking the question: how could I make this better if I could only subtract? If adding more workouts or more to your existing workouts wasn’t an option, is there something you could stop doing that would increase the overall efficacy? Or maybe there’s a part of your daily routine that no longer helps you the way it once did?

Because truthfully, even those great additions we love—the invention, the novel, the product, the person—they’re as much a product of subtraction as well.

How could you make it better by only taking away?

Morning Reading is a daily email to help center yourself, reflect, and prepare for the day. It’s sent with love from your friend, Zach in Austin, Texas. He even drew the logo himself.

Logo

Copyright (C) Want to change how you receive these emails?You can update your preferences or unsubscribe