Addition by subtraction is a concept where you increase, addition, your results by removing unnecessary actions or things. By removing things you can increase the amount of focus and energy you put into the other things. This allows you to do the things which generate the most results and remove the things which don’t add results.
When it comes to deciding what to remove, you look for asymmetrical values. You keep the actions that get 1 input and produce 10 output, of course, these numbers are, in this case, arbitrary and will depend on your situation.
You’ll probably see your results increasing more than the asymmetry would suggest. The reason is that you reduce the amount of complexity by removing variables. Whatever the size of your project, you want to keep the number of variables small. Having a limited amount of variables allows you to run a lot of small experiments and see what effect the variables have. When running an experiment you always only test a single variable, otherwise, you won’t be able to tell cause and effect.
As important as it is to test a single variable at a time, remember that variables affect each other, and for any system, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. But by reducing the number of variables, it allows you to build an effective system and you’ll see how the parts affect the whole.
Keep on improving!