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"You need to read this book." -Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"A great book changes the world you live in, revealing mysteries you didn't even know were there. This is a great book." -Sendhil Mullainathan, MacArthur fellow and author of Scarcity
Blending behavioral science and design, Leidy Klotz's Subtract offers a scientific appreciation of why we underuse subtraction-and how to access its untapped potential.We pile on "to-dos" but don't consider "stop-doings." We create incentives for good behavior, but don't get rid of obstacles to it. We collect new-and-improved ideas, but don't prune the outdated ones. Every day, across challenges big and small, we neglect a basic way to make things better: we don't subtract. Klotz's pioneering research shows us what is true whether we're building Lego models, cities, grilled-cheese sandwiches, or strategic plans: Our minds tend to add before taking away, and this is holding us back.
But we have a choice-our blind spot need not go on taking its toll.
Subtract arms us with the science of less and empowers us to revolutionize our day-to-day lives and shift how we move through the world. More or less.
List of contents
Introduction: The Other Kind of Change
PART I: Seeing More
1. Overlooking Less: Legos, the Lab, and Beyond
2. The Biology of More: Our Adding Instincts
3. The Temple and the City: Adding Brings Civilization, and Civilization Brings More
4. More-ality: Time, Money, and the Modern Gospel of Adding
PART II: Sharing Less
5. Noticeable Less: Finding and Sharing Subtraction
6. Scaling Subtraction: Using Less to Change the System
7. A Legacy of Less: Subtracting in the Anthropocene
8. From Information to Wisdom: Learning by Subtracting
Takeaways
About the author
Leidy Klotz
