Narrator: A father and his three-year-old son are on the floor, building a bridge out of Legos. They’ve built two support towers, but there’s a problem: one tower is taller than the other, making the bridge uneven. The father’s immediate, almost unconscious, instinct is to grab another block to add to the shorter tower. But before he can, his son, Ezra, does something that stops him in his tracks. The little boy simply reaches over and removes a block from the taller tower. In an instant, the problem is solved—perfectly, efficiently, and elegantly. This simple moment of childhood clarity sparked a profound question for the father, engineer and author Leidy Klotz: why do we so consistently overlook the power of taking things away?

In his book, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, Klotz embarks on a journey to answer that question. He reveals a fundamental, yet invisible, human bias that shapes our world, from our cluttered homes and overstuffed schedules to our sprawling cities and complex global problems. The book argues that we are all conditioned to solve problems by adding, and in doing so, we neglect one of the most powerful tools for improvement: subtraction.

Narrator: Our minds systematically default to addition. When faced with a problem, our first impulse is to ask, "What can I add?" while the question "What can I take away?" often doesn't even occur to us. Klotz and his colleagues demonstrated this phenomenon, which they term "subtraction neglect," through a series of ingenious experiments.

In one study, participants were presented with a Lego structure supporting a platform. A stormtrooper figure stood beneath it. The challenge was to stabilize the platform so it could hold a brick without crushing the stormtrooper. The most elegant solution was to simply remove a single, non-essential Lego block from the support column, which made the entire structure stable. However, the vast majority of participants didn't see this. Instead, they began adding more blocks, creating clumsy, inefficient supports. It was only when the researchers added a simple cue—"Remember, removing pieces is free"—that the rate of subtraction-based solutions dramatically increased. This proved the issue wasn't a preference for adding, but a cognitive blind spot. Subtraction wasn't even being considered as an option. This bias extends far beyond Legos; studies found the same pattern when people were asked to improve travel itineraries, essays, and even recipes. We are conditioned to build, to accumulate, and to add, often to our own detriment.

Narrator: This bias isn't a modern quirk; it's rooted in our biology and reinforced by our culture. From an evolutionary perspective, acquiring resources—more food, more tools, more shelter—was directly linked to survival. Klotz points to the bowerbird, which meticulously builds and decorates an elaborate structure not for shelter, but purely to signal its competence and fitness to potential mates. Humans share this instinct to demonstrate value by adding and accumulating. Adding something leaves a visible mark of our effort, while subtracting often leaves no trace, making it a less rewarding way to show our work.

Civilization itself is a story of addition. The discovery of Göbekli Tepe, a massive temple complex in Turkey built by hunter-gatherers, upended the long-held theory that agriculture came before monumental construction. It suggests that the act of adding—the collaborative, long-term project of building a temple—may have been the very catalyst that brought people together and necessitated the development of farming and permanent settlements. From ancient pyramids to modern skyscrapers, our cultures celebrate the grand, the additive, and the monumental. This deep-seated history of adding has created a world where "more" is often equated with "better."

Narrator: While our biological and cultural biases are ancient, modern economic forces have supercharged our tendency to add. Klotz traces this back to the post-World War II era, specifically to President Harry Truman’s 1949 inaugural address. Truman declared that "greater production is the key to prosperity and peace," effectively creating a moral imperative for endless growth. This "more-ality" became the gospel of modern capitalism.

We see its effects everywhere. Homeowners add extensions not just for space, but because square footage directly increases a home's market value. Companies relentlessly add features to products, assuming more is always more desirable. This often ignores the power of subtractive innovation. For example, the Strider bike became a massive success by doing the unthinkable: it subtracted the pedals. This simple act of removal created a "balance bike" that allowed toddlers to learn to ride far earlier and more intuitively than with traditional training wheels. By removing a core component, the inventor created a better product and a new market, proving that less can be far more valuable.

Narrator: One of the biggest hurdles for subtraction is its invisibility. When you add a new feature, everyone sees it. When you remove a flaw, simplify a process, or prevent a problem, the result is often an absence that goes unnoticed. To overcome this, subtraction must be made visible and desirable.

Musician Bruce Springsteen did this when crafting his 1978 album, Darkness on the Edge of Town. Coming off the sprawling success of Born to Run, he deliberately chose to subtract. He whittled down over fifty recorded songs to just ten. He stripped his lyrics of needless words and his arrangements of excess instrumentation. The result was a stark, powerful, and focused album that was defined by what wasn't there. The subtraction was so profound that it became the album's defining feature, making the "less" a noticeable and celebrated artistic statement. Similarly, tidying expert Marie Kondo reframed the painful act of discarding possessions by inverting it. Instead of asking "What should I get rid of?", she asks "What sparks joy?". This shifts the focus from loss to a positive gain—the creation of a serene, joyful space.

Narrator: Applying subtraction to our personal lives is one thing, but its true power is revealed when applied to complex systems. To change a system, we often try to add driving forces—more incentives, more rules, more pressure. However, social psychologist Kurt Lewin argued that it is far more effective to identify and subtract the restraining forces that hold the system in place.

The decades-long fight to end apartheid in South Africa is a powerful example. For years, the world added driving forces like condemnations and protests, but the system held firm. The turning point came with a subtractive strategy: divestment. Activists like dockworker Leo Robinson, who in 1984 refused to unload South African cargo in San Francisco, helped spark a global movement to subtract the economic fuel that propped up the apartheid regime. By removing financial support, the movement dismantled one of the key restraining forces, leading to the system's eventual collapse. This principle shows that to solve our biggest problems, from systemic racism to climate change, we must look beyond adding new programs and instead focus on removing the barriers that prevent progress.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Subtract is that taking things away is not a passive act of surrender, but an active and powerful form of creation. Our world, and our own minds, are built on a powerful, often invisible, bias for addition. We instinctively add tasks to our to-do lists, features to our products, and complexity to our systems, rarely stopping to consider what could be removed.

Leidy Klotz challenges us to see the world differently—to recognize the elegance of the empty space, the power of the removed obstacle, and the wisdom in simplicity. The next time you face a challenge, whether it’s a cluttered closet, a packed schedule, or a complex project at work, resist the initial urge to add. Instead, ask the question that our brains so often forget: What can I take away? The answer might be the most powerful solution you find.