When asked what it takes to win a Nobel prize, Francis Crick said, “Oh, it’s very simple. My secret has been I know what to ignore. Avoiding can be more important than finding."
I recently read somewhere
that we spend the first half of our lives adding things, and the second half
subtracting most of them.
Somewhere in mid age, we
realize that most of our choices were mistakes, and then we start subtracting
vigorously.
Lest you lose out on the
positive compounding timeframe, you will do yourself a world of good by
respecting and practicing this lesson – of saying no to most things, of not
adding a lot of unwanted stuff early.
Most people immediately
look at what they can create or add to something to make it better. Very few
people consider what they could remove.
Yet, there is immense power
in improvement by subtraction - an idea called Via negativa.
Via negativa is essentially the study of what
not to do.
The idea comes from a Latin
phrase used initially in Christian Theology to explain what God is by focusing
on what he isn’t.
Naval Ravikant uses via
negativa to help him make decisions.
In The Almanack of Naval
Ravikant, he says: "I don’t believe I have the ability to say what is
going to work. Rather, I try to eliminate what’s not going to work. I think
being successful is just about not making mistakes. It’s not about having
correct judgment. It’s about avoiding incorrect judgements."
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