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You're likely still stuck in outdated recurring meetings, wearing a fraction of your wardrobe, and keeping apps you haven’t opened in months.
We do not like to delete things, because we think it could mean we lose something important. We even love adding over deleting.
As a result, we sacrifice optimization, beauty, and maintainability for clutter that should have been cleared.
Many have pointed to this principle:
- DHH: “Don’t scar on the first cut.”
- Elon Musk: “Make it easier to remove a law than create one.”
- Elon Musk (again): “Try deleting every part of the process.” and “If you're not adding back at least 10%, you're not deleting enough.”
- Yuval Noah Harari: “The most important button on the keyboard is delete.”
- Sociocracy 3.0: Uses “sunset clauses” to automatically delete policies unless revoted.
- Notion: Uses page expiry to enforce cleanup.
More code, more cloths, more documentation, more policies fundamentally lead to more complexity. We do not like complexity.
That’s why I argue for delete by default in many cases, especially where decisions are reversible. Systems can support this.
Subtraction creates space, clarity, speed, and focus — and that’s what truly boosts productivity.