The Value of Less
I used to have 373 different pens — I’m more surprised that I actually counted. My desk was covered in mountains of notes and widgets that I swear I needed for that one thing two weeks ago. Every time someone suggested throwing away anything, I would use the most obscure cop — out I could think of. Maybe it runs in the family, maybe it doesn’t, but the clutter on my desk and in my house often extended to the way I carried myself with people.
When I needed something from a friend or co-worker, I used to provide more background than I knew what to do with. Even the most mundane thing would become a tragedy in three parts; a riveting epic to put Homer to shame and bring the old masters of storytelling to heel … to ask for some toner. I have a feeling that this came from a place of insecurity, that I needed to convince people I was worthy enough to come to them with this burdensome request, when in reality it took two seconds of their life that they were probably going to spend looking at cat photos on the internet.
It’s really important to reflect on this kind of thing; so I figured I’d give it a go. How much do we really need to say before we start to get lost in the details? Do the details even matter? A lot of people would say that all knowledge is valuable, but that doesn’t change the fact that I would have rather learned how to do my taxes in high school than discover that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. I realized that most of the things we do and say to each other aren’t really needed, and I’ve included a very scientific diagram for reference.
It’s unlikely that not including your tragic backstory will lead your barista to deny you the soymilk you desperately need. Including it won’t invigorate them to give you soymilk with extra passion and sad violin music in the background — it’s basically the same outcome, no matter what. You don’t need to validate yourself to others when you ask for something, and your barista probably doesn’t care about the details in the first place. Word economy is a beautiful thing — a small step in the philosophy of “less”, a way of thinking about life without getting bogged down in complexities that waste your time.
Reflecting on your personal life has profound effects on your work ethic and directing your creativity. Sometimes, designing something is more about taking away than it is about adding; about recognizing that less can be more, and that not every element has a place in the experience. There’s plenty of companies and startups out there that try (and fail) to be the jack-of-all-trades; they try to be dozens of different things, and assume that people want them to fill dozens of different molds. Some of them succeed, like Google and Amazon, but only because they started by committing themselves to one thing really well. Google started as just a search engine, and for many years, that’s all it was. Amazon was built on the really simple premise that bookstores can be digital. They grew because they learned to define themselves by setting simple goals and expanded only when it became necessary. Recognizing the value of less can be the difference between success and failure.
I used to have 373 pens — and I threw away 372. My desk is free of anything that isn’t immediately important to me. When I need toner, I ask for it — but I don’t let the muses flow through me and describe the heroic chain of events that led me to the front desk. The only things I keep are the ones that truly matter, and the only things I give to others are the things that bring them value, nothing more. The company that Isaac and I started, Nouvo, fills one role— we give shoppers a sense of community. But we do it well, because sometimes doing less is exactly what gives people more.