Subtraction is the harder discipline.
Bruce Lee put it plainly: it is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease.
Our natural inclination for productivity is to do more and get more. But is that really the case?
Many of my coaching sessions come back to the same core themes of choice and decision-making. We are rarely conscious that a day is really a long sequence of decisions made minute by minute, mostly below our awareness.
Those unconscious choices stack up, and in Lean terms they often compound into 無駄 (muda), 無理 (muri) and むら (mura): wasteful, stretched and inconsistent effort.
We have finite resources, mentally, cognitively and physically, and our choices need to be made with that constraint in mind.
So each day, inspect. Hack away at the inessentials, as Bruce says.


