In the first part of Subtract, the book quickly described the points needed to activate subtraction on our actions. In the book, they reported research that points to the fact we usually add rather than subtract when approaching a problem.
In the first example of the book, a kid is playing with legos trying to build a bridge between two pillars. These pillars are uneven in height. The mom reached out to take a new lego piece, while her children decided to take away a piece of lego. What the kid did lead to the pillars being even, thus the kid arrived at the solution to making a bridge. Nevertheless, the takeaway from the story is that the mom's action of adding another piece of lego is statistically a more common action to arrive at a solution than rather subtract.
The researchers figured out that there are three actions that an individual facing a puzzle can take to lean more towards subtraction rather than adding:
- Cue. A prompt that lets you know that subtraction is a possibilty will gear your mind towards it.
- Deep thoughts. I interpreted it as the possibility to rethink your decision will make you considerer the possiblity of subtraction.
- Bandwith. I intrepred it as the ability to stay focus on the task, if distracted it reduces the possibility of subtraction.
These three items are very appealing to me. I decided to carry them over to the situations where a discovery or breakthrough is needed. The ability to focus has been discussed extensively by Cal Newport, and recently I red in Adam Grant's book "Think Again" that not marrying to the first option leads you to a more accurate answer.
The first step, the cue, I have encountered in historial books about science. The story goes that you need to prime your mind for possiblities. If I were to start by thinking that a problem is unsolvable for sure it will. Cueing my mind that there is a possiblity that a problem could be solved, is thus the first step to find a resolution.
Subtract, tells research as stories. The previous paragraph is a little bit of my imagination. However, ideas not tested yet may prove to be wrong or right, you never know.
The thought I wrote down here came while reading Subtract.