Improving by Removing

Sometimes less is more.

Have you ever tried to solve a problem by listing everything, maybe pulling in all the issues. In many situations, we seem to solve problems by adding. But in our Science round up this month, we discovered more evidence that actually you can improve by removing!

“When considering two broad possibilities for why people systematically default to addition — either they generate ideas for both possibilities and disproportionately discard subtractive solutions or they overlook subtractive ideas altogether”.

In other words, we look at more ideas which can solve issues. In this study, the researchers focused on taking things away and looked at the results.

‘Additive ideas come to mind quickly and easily, but subtractive ideas require more cognitive effort.’

The researchers think there may be a self-reinforcing effect, the more we pile on we think it’s easier to handle, whereas the opposite is true.

‘The more often people rely on additive strategies, the more cognitively accessible they become,’ Adams said.

‘Over time, the habit of looking for additive ideas may get stronger and stronger, and in the long run, we end up missing out on many opportunities to improve the world by subtraction.’ . . .

‘I think our research has tremendous implications across contexts, but especially in engineering to improve how we design technology to benefit humanity,’ Klotz said.

Jennifer McManamay.  2021.  “Why Our Brains Miss Opportunities to Improve Through Subtraction.”  Press release, University of Virginia, https://engineering.virginia.edu/news/2021/04/why-our-brains-miss-opport…