LESS
From a business perspective, I’ve admired Elon Musk for a long time. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he says or does. I don’t know anyone I agree with 100% of the time. But I recently came across a five-step problem-solving process he follows, and one part of it really stuck with me.
Before you improve something, ask whether it should exist at all.
Then try to delete it.
At first, that sounds counterintuitive. Most of us immediately look for ways to make something better. We make it faster. More efficient. More organized. But Musk’s point is that people often spend enormous amounts of time optimizing things that never should have been there in the first place.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized life has a way of accumulating things.
A few commitments become a packed calendar. A few possessions become a crowded garage. A few responsibilities become a life that feels heavier than it used to. It rarely happens all at once. Things simply collect around us over time until we can no longer remember what life felt like before they arrived.
I think that’s part of what makes the story of Gideon so fascinating. He gathered thirty-two thousand men to face the Midianites, and God told him the army was too large. Not too small. Too large.
Most leaders would have been praying for reinforcements. God started sending people home.
By the end, only three hundred remained.
The lesson wasn’t military strategy. It was dependence. God was stripping away everything that might tempt Israel to believe the victory came from their own strength.
I’ve noticed some of the best decisions in business work the same way. They weren’t new ideas or new initiatives. They were things we stopped doing. Reports nobody needed. Meetings that served no purpose. Processes that existed simply because they always had.
Life requires that kind of inventory from time to time.
Not everything we’ve carried for years is meant to be carried forever.
Not every obligation belongs in this season. Not every habit deserves a permanent place in our lives. Not every expectation we’ve accepted actually came from God.
Sometimes growth comes from adding something new.
Sometimes it comes from having the wisdom to ask a much simpler question:
Does this still belong here?
If this resonated with you, share it with someone who may need it today.
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