Next month we're going to read Utopia for Realists. Join the book club to get all the discussion.
In many ways I feel like most of the books I've read this year have been poor choices. None of them have had profound impacts on my thinking. They haven't changed my productivity practice, or changed my mind on any topics. Subtract isn't any different, but maybe I know why now.
Near the end of Subtract, Leidy Klotz cites Cal Newport and his books like Digital Minimalism or Deep Work as originating works that told us to subtract from our workload to get better work done. Since I've read both of those, and found Deep Work in particular life changing, and also read many other books of similar ilk maybe I'm just done learning about the topic of subtraction as a method towards better outcomes.
I felt similar when I read Essentialism. So many people cited it as a formidable book in the genre that changed how they thought about their work. It was cited in many other books I read, but by the time I got to it I had read no fewer than 12 books in the genre and even if Essentialism started the wave, I felt it was simply rehashing a bunch of stuff I had already read.
That's how I feel about Subtract, it's rehashing many things I've already read about creating limits on your work. I already take book notes by hand as a forcing function to ensure that whatever notes I'm taking are high enough quality to warrant the effort of writing anything down. I subtracted 99% of my meetings and reject every single one I can so that I have time to do hard thinking work.
I've even paired down my writing in the last few years. If you clicked on my Deep Work post above you'll find a 6000 word epic post. I remember looking at my writing at the time and figuring that if I had lots of citations to the book and other books then it was clearly a good post. Much like Klotz1 says I used length of argument as a proxy for it's quality.
So what did I get out of Subtract, not that much but I've already been on a journey that included subtraction.
Should you read Subtract by Leidy Klotz, it depends. If you've already read books like Deep Work, Digital Minimalism and Essentialism I don't think that Klotz will add much to your understanding of how to remove things from your life. If you haven't read other books like it, then it's as good a place to start as any other.
Footnotes
1 Subtract Pg 153
