Subtraction is well worth the ex

You may have heard the expression, I’ve written you a long letter because I didn’t have time to write you a short one. This pithy remark has been attributed to the author Mark Twain – but it could have been written by any one of us going about our daily lives. That’s because it gets at an essential truth: subtraction is hard work.

Whether you’re chipping away at a concrete freeway or a wordy sentence, cutting out the unnecessary to arrive at something better takes much more effort than just leaving things as they are. It's easier to walk away when something’s “good enough.” After all, that short letter probably would have been better, but the longer one did the job, too.

Nobel Prize–winning economist Herbert Simon even came up with a word for our tendency to leave things at “good enough.” He called it satisficing: a blend of satisfying and sufficient. In everyday life, we often fall into the trap of thinking that satisficing is the best option – but, as we’ll see, when we satisfice, we miss out on a whole host of benefits.

A great example of going beyond satisficing comes from the city of Lexington, Kentucky. When Lexington ran a competition to redesign the cityscape, the winning entry came from an urban designer with a passion for subtraction. Her name was Kate Orff, and she quickly identified the satisficing status quo in Lexington.

Over a hundred years earlier, the city had decided to block off the creek that ran through the town. This was done to prevent flooding and outbreaks of cholera – a disease that was rampant in the nineteenth century. People hastily covered up the town's creek with houses and roads. This wasn't the perfect solution, but it prevented illness and was “good enough” for over a hundred years.

But fast forward to the twenty-first century, and Orff saw an opportunity to subtract what was now unnecessary. She removed the buildings and roads that had been built on the creek, and uncovered Lexington’s waterway. Thanks to her subtraction, the creek now provides a calming focal point for the city – and lots of space for waterside sitting and leisure. Through her refusal to accept “good enough,” Orff reinvigorated a whole community, simply by taking things away.