The tendency of our lives, businesses, art, is to keep adding: more furniture, clothes, gadgets, tasks, appointments, features to websites and apps, words to our writing.

Continual addition isn’t sustainable or desirable:

• Too many things to do means we’re always busy, with no time for rest, stillness, contemplation, creativity, time with loved ones.
• Overwhelming customers with choices means they’re less likely to make an actual choice. They’d prefer that we curate the best.
• Too many possessions is clutter, visual stress, cleaning, maintenance, debt, less happiness.
• Too many tasks makes it harder to focus on any one thing or get anything done.
• Too many things we want to learn means we never learn anything well.

Subtraction is beautiful: it creates space, time, clarity.

Subtraction is necessary: otherwise we are overburdened.

Subtraction can be painful: it means letting go of a child.

Subtraction is an art that improves with practice. Subtraction can be practiced on your schedule, task list, commitments list, possessions, reading list, writing, product line, distractions.

What can you subtract right now?

Via Leo Babauta

Via High Existence

M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. Tick. M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i. Tock. And on and on… and on and on it goes. Time. It’s linear, chronological and calendrical. It used to have its own tower, then moved to our wrists, and since the middle of the 20th century has been digitally scored by our tools. It’s whole existence obeys a precise sequentiality that yields 60 seconds a minute, 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day, etc, etc.

Timing, however, is a whole ‘nother beast. Timing is being in tune with the moment; it’s being present and (un)consciously in harmony with your surroundings. Timing is perceiving the malleability of time, mindfully utilizing it to do, or just, to be. In the process of timing something, you’re usually not thinking about time but rather your opportunity in time.

The Greeks distinctly separated these concepts, referring to time as Chronos and timing as Kairos. Chronos captures the mundanity of moment-to-moment life; Kairos, on the other hand, captures the moments in life that feel like a universe in and of itself.

Think of yourself up late at night, headphones juiced with your favorite music as you delve down into the rabbit hole of some Internet backlog, discovering some ancient or newfound wisdom, or writing code; feeling like you are transcending all of your previous limits… Kairos is that sensation of great revelation; Chronos is the hour that’s passed on the clock.

Read on — here. 

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner finds time every day to do nothing. And as one of the most powerful executives in the tech world, it’s certainly not because he isn’t busy: Weiner says that leaving gaps in his schedule is the “single most important productivity tool” he uses.

“As the company grows larger… you will require more time than ever before to just think,” Weiner wrote. “Think about what the company will look like in three to five years; think about the best way to improve an already popular product or address an unmet customer need…”

As Fast Company noted, too much “busyness” can get in the way of doing business well — and the failure to allow time for pausing and thinking could lead to a company’s lack of innovation.

Weiner isn’t the only one to advocate reducing busyness and slowing down as a way to optimize creativity and productivity. Author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss wrote in The 4-Hour Workweek, “There’s a big difference between being productive and being busy. Instead of measuring the amount of work you do, measure results in terms of the amount of time, and eliminate the less important things that take forever.”

In addition to allowing companies be more successful we think “doing nothing” is key to limiting distractions and being content. Doing nothing will allow us to practice listening to ourselves and listening to our breath. It will allow us to acknowledge our Higher Power.

While reading Sharath’s notes from last week I was impressed by how much he talked about limiting distractions and acknowledging distractions around you. Paramahansa Yogananda also encouraged a generation to “do nothing and find God.” Maybe finding the “middle way” between being incredibly busy and not busy is pure for us as humans. Maybe not too…