Extreme Subtraction: Eliminate Everything.
Note: My coaching philosophy—Extreme Subtraction—is an amalgamation of hundreds of books and endless hours of 1-on-1 personal coaching, but here are just a few of the books that shaped my thinking the most:
Relentless Solution Focus by Dr. Jason Selk
The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris
The ONE Thing by Gary Keller
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield
I share all of that with you to let you know that nothing I’m about to share is particularly novel or original. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel! I’ve simply amalgamated and iterated on the timeless principles articulated by great thinkers, writers, and coaches who came before!
Lastly, I hope this philosophy resonates with you!
—JM
Extreme Subtraction is EXACTLY what it sounds like:
Remove EVERYTHING that doesn’t matter and focus on the 2-3 things that TRULY get you closer to your goals—as QUICKLY as possible.
If you’ve ever worked refer to the the last book on the list I shared above: Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield.
The core idea of Pressfield’s work is that when we do hard things we encounter a force called Resistance.
If you’ve tried to do something hard then you’re DEFINITELY familiar with Resistance.
Resistance is the force that pushes against you when you’re attempting to do something great. Things like: starting a business, writing a book, or making a sale.
The solution, Pressfield says is to turn pro.
Turning pro means no longer confronting your work as an “Amateur”—someone who passively drifts through life. Instead he recommends assuming the identity of a Professional. Someone who steps into their full potential and executes at the absolute top of their game. Every single day.
We are always making a choice.
Are a Professional, or an Amateur?
In the second half of this book, Pressfield contrasts the Amateur and the Professional in a series of short, pithy chapters no more than a few pages each.
One of those chapters expresses the heart and soul of Extreme Subtraction so I wanted to share it with you:
“…none of us was writing a real novel, or painting a real painting, or starting a real business. We were amateurs living in the past or dreaming of the future, while failing utterly to do the work necessary to progress in the present.
When you turn pro, your life gets very simple.
The Zen monk, the artist, the entrepreneur often lead lives so plain they’re practically invisible. Miyamoto Musashi’s dojo was smaller than my living room. Things became superfluous for him. In the end he didn’t even need a sword…
…Turning pro is an act of self-abnegation. Not Self with a capital-S, but little-s self. Ego. Distraction. Displacement. Addiction.”
The key to RAPID progress and MASSIVE results is to REMOVE all superfluous energy and action.
As you can tell, this idea excites me. It first took hold of me ~2019 and I’ve been in love with it ever since.
Another idea I write about often is The Power Law. Basically the 80/20 rule on steroids.
The Power Law is the idea that only a handful of factors (or investments) generate the vast majority of your results/returns.
Gary Keller, creator of the iconic Keller-Williams real estate empire, calls it Extreme Pareto. The 99/1 Rule. He believes that ONE thing generates 99% of your results. In many ways, Gary Keller is the ULTIMATE expression of Extreme Substraction.
The key to massive results is ripping away EVERYTHING that doesn’t matter, and getting LASER-FOCUSED on the things that generate results.
So where to start applying this in your own life?
Rather than starting with the micro, I recommend zooming out and cutting large activities that sap 80%+ of your time.
For example, if I’m not careful I can spend hours on YouTube watching documentaries, keeping up with politics, or reading books. I use an application on my MacBook called Self-Control that blocks all of my websites for a certain period of time—and unlike other blocker apps there is no password or bypass.
Once you get the big obvious distractions out of the way you’ll notice that much of what’s left over is not as necessary as you first realized.
Another great way to apply Extreme Subtraction is by compressing time.
For example, it’s tempting to book 30 minute meetings to work through a problem. Perhaps sometimes that’s required, like during a first meeting with someone, but more often than not you end up inflating the time it takes to complete a task.
In fact, what usually happens we inflate the time it takes to complete a task match exactly with the time we’ve allotted for it. If we say it will take us 7 days, it ends up taking 7 days. If we say it will take us an hour, it takes an hour. This phenomenon is called Parkinson’s Law.
This is why setting super short deadlines is so exciting.
It fights this tendency and has the added benefit of getting you out of your own head. It also allows you to make contact with the marketplace and iterate quickly.
Here’s one of the ways this shows up for me: I don’t spend very long in meetings to an almost absurd degree. I try not to book meetings in the first place, and once I’m in one, I try and remove all superfluous elements and focus on whatever needs to be done.
On the advice of Dr Jason Selk, creator of the Relentless Solutions Focus model—I try and keep coaching calls less than 15 minutes and focus on finding the one key breakthrough that a client needs.
As Grant Cardone likes to say: speed is the new big—in other words, don’t take 10 days if it only takes 10 minutes.
As a counterpoint and caveat, I recently read Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. The thesis of his book is that in the knowledge economy, we’ve been brainwashed into filling 8 hours every with “productive” time and that the way to resist this is to focus on being productive a few hours a day and make consistent progress towards a goal.
I would agree with that hypothesis, but I think the word “Slow” is misleading. He doesn’t mean allow yourself to be lackadaisical or laissez-faire. He means be methodical and intentional.
There’s an expression in the military: slow is smooth, smooth is fast—rather than trying to do something quickly and making errors, execute as methodically and as smoothly as you can.
This is a liberating idea, because it pushes back against the tendency to be so fast that quality suffers, while also encouraging you to respect your time.
For example, if the objective of a call is to solve Problem X, then solve Problem X as quickly as possible and get off the call. If the objective of a call is to spend quality time together, then set aside time to do that and catch up.
Cal Newport calls this High-Quality Leisure. when we try and be leisurely during a period that doesn’t require it, things get messy.
When you’re working work, when you’re playing play.
One last idea worth mentioning: in my view there is a metaphorical “Price” that must be paid to get whatever result you want.
You must find a way to pay it.
Nothing more, nothing less. Your job is to pay that price with as few steps as possible. Seek out the superfluous elements and strip them all away one by one.
The maxim of Extreme Subtraction would be:
Maximum result, minimum effort.
Start Now.
Here are a handful of questions you can ask yourself to start applying this idea in your life ASAP:
What can I stop doing right now?
What actions or choices are not serving me?
Where am I not respecting my time?
How can I deliver better quality, with less effort?
How can I maximize results while minimizing effort?
What is the one task that drives the biggest results for me in my personal or professional life?
How can I optimize around that task?
