top of page
Search

21. Empowerment Through Subtraction



Teacher smiling in a classroom

ABOUT THE PODCAST:

Adding is our natural default when it comes to solving problems and striving to improve our lives.  We add organizers to manage clutter. We add diet plans to lose weight. We add programs to help struggling students. And we add meetings to implement the programs.


What if real empowerment comes not from adding…but from subtracting?


In this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast, I share why we don’t typically consider subtraction, why busyness has become a sneaky badge of honor, and how doing less allows you to create more value in your life. You’ll hear stories, research insights, and practical examples you can try right away to simplify your work, home, and mindset.


Subtraction isn’t laziness or giving up. It’s a powerful strategy for replenishing energy and decreasing stress and burnout.


WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Why our brains are wired to add instead of subtract

  • How subtracting media inputs, email subscriptions, and dinner options can free up mental and emotional bandwidth

  • What we think busyness says about us

  • Research-backed benefits of doing less in the classroom and in life

  • Practical subtraction ideas you can implement right away


LINKS AND RESOURCES:


HAVE A COMMENT OR QUESTION?





SEE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Years ago, I was standing in front of our coat closet, struggling to figure out how I could make it function better.  It was packed to the brim with coats, gloves, hats, scarves, umbrellas, tech gadgets, kitchen items, and buckets of food storage.  It was so packed that getting anything out of or back into the closet was a nightmare that involved a crazy combination of bodily contortion, balance, and grit.


Now, what was even worse was that all of our closets were like that.  And our garage, too.  So it wasn’t like I could move some things out of this closet and into a different one.  And even worse than that was that we weren’t short on storage space.  Our house has a decent amount of closets and cabinets.  That was one of the major selling points for me when we bought this house – and all of those spaces were jam-packed.


So, I stood there for a while in front of the overflowing coat closet, my brain buzzing with organization ideas.  Could I add another shelf or two?  Maybe some drawers or baskets?  Some kind of rack on the back of the door?  Maybe space bags or vacuum cubes to compress some of the things?  Or maybe what I really needed was to wander the home organization aisles in Target to get ideas.  I mean, Target is always a good idea, right?


As I was considering what I should add to the closet, the thought suddenly popped in my head that if I just had less stuff, I wouldn’t need more organizers.  If I just had less stuff, the remaining items would automagically be more accessible and easier to get in and out.

In today’s episode we’re going to continue this theme.  We’re going to talk about our natural human tendency to add things when we’re trying to solve problems, and how it can be really empowering to consider subtraction instead.


Ready?  Let’s get into it.


Are you ready to feel more empowered and less overwhelmed at home and in the classroom?  I’m Keri Martinez, and I’m a wife, mother, and educator- turned-life coach with more than 25 years experience.  I’m here to offer you strategies, tips, and tools to help you increase your personal power so you can stop stressing and obsessing, and start enjoying your work and family more.  I know that when you feel better, you do better.  But it can seem darn near impossible to feel better when you’re handling two of the most demanding jobs on the planet – teacher and mom.  Typical PD sessions, conference workshops, and self-help books on work-life balance aren’t cutting it, so It’s time for a different approach.  Welcome to the Empowered Educator Mom Podcast.


Hello everybody.  Welcome back to the podcast.  I am so happy you’re here and tuning in, and I hope you’ve been enjoying the past couple of episodes and the focus on empowerment.  I hope the ideas I’ve been sharing have been helping you, encouraging you, and inspiring you.  And if they have, please share the podcast with another educator mom you think might benefit, because the more empowered educator moms we have in the world, the better.


OK.  Onto this week’s empowerment topic.  I first want to ask, could you relate to the story I shared in the intro?  Do you have a closet or closets (plural) like that in your home?  And have you ever found yourself thinking, as I did, that you just need more or better organization containers or shelves or whatever to fix the problem?  For whatever reason, this seems to be our brain’s natural default – to look for things to add instead of first considering how subtracting might help.


Leidy Klotz, a professor of engineering, systems, and environment at the University of Virginia, noticed this tendency when he was playing legos with his three-year-old son.  In his book, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, he talks about building a bridge out of legos.  The bridge was wobbly and lopsided because one side of the bridge was taller than the other, so Leidy instinctively reached for another brick to add to the shorter side to balance it out.  But in the time it took him to do that, his son removed a brick from the taller side and solved the problem in a different way.  This got Leidy wondering how prevalent the tendency is to add vs. subtract, and he ended up studying it through his university job.


He found that adding is our default most of the time.  We seem to have this built in notion that if one is good, two is better, and that bigger is better.  And I think that is so fascinating.  Just consider how often this tendency is showing up in your life.  For example, when you see a chef taste-testing a recipe and it doesn’t taste quite right, what’s the usual response?  Something is missing, right?  It needs something added to brighten the flavor or balance the heat or whatever.  When students aren’t meeting grade level standards, what’s the typical response?  We need to add another program, another initiative, more money, more teachers, more technology.  When we don’t feel like we have anything to wear, we tell ourselves we need to go shopping and get something else.  If we’re struggling to lose weight, we think we need to try another diet, exercise more, or try another supplement.  And very often when we’re trying to decide about something – what to purchase, which activity to include in a lesson plan, which exercise routine to follow, for example – we think we need more and more and more research before we can make that decision.


Klotz says, “In our striving to improve our lives, our work, and our society, we overwhelmingly add” (Subtract, p. 12).  And my question is, why?  Why do we do this?  Why is that our default?  Why is adding often the only option we see or consider?  Why is subtraction not more obvious or compelling to us?


Well, there are a variety of theories, and I’d like to discuss three.  First, Leidy Klotz says we neglect subtraction because, “Compared to changes that add, those that subtract are harder to think of” and “harder to implement” (p. 13).  We’re not used to thinking in terms of subtraction, so it’s harder for us to do.


Second, from an evolutionary standpoint, having more – more food, more livestock, more clothing, more children, and so on – equates to survival and status.  The more food I have or the greater my capacity to acquire food, the more likely I am to survive.  The more children I have, the more likely my genetic line will continue.   Ideals have shifted somewhat in our modern world, and large families are no longer the norm in most parts of the world, but the drive to have more is still pretty prevalent.


Third, doing less feels uncomfortable…for a couple of reasons.  First, we have become so accustomed to the frenetic pace and constant stimulation of modern life that we struggle to handle stillness…in any form.  There’s a fascinating study I’ll link to in the show notes where the researchers found a significant number of people would rather experience an electric shock than sit alone with their thoughts for just 15 minutes.  I confess I can’t really relate to that because I love just sitting and thinking, but I can definitely relate to the other reason which is that busyness has become a status symbol.  We use busyness to signal our value and importance or to signal how amazingly full our lives are.  Conversely, we think not being busy is an indication of laziness or a dull life.  Think about that.  “Busy” is now such a common response to the question, “How are you?” that it almost feels socially unacceptable to respond otherwise.


I know we all say we’d like to be less busy, but consider this:  if you weren’t busy, how would you feel about that?  Most of you are probably saying, “Are you kidding?  I’d feel great!  Awesome!  Fantastic!”  But pause and really think about that.  Would you feel amazing if you were less busy?


For most of the time I worked in public education, I would’ve emphatically said I wanted to be less busy.  I wanted less things on my plate.  I had a lot of responsibilities at home and at work.  I was stressed and overwhelmed and felt like I couldn’t keep up a lot of the time.  But – here’s the kicker.  At one point, my boss decided to reallocate responsibilities within our department to balance the workload.  She took a massive responsibility off my plate, one I had handled for more than ten years and that took me hundreds of hours each year to complete, and she assigned it to someone else.  I suddenly had a lot more room in my schedule.  And you know what?  I was devastated when that happened.  I should’ve been ecstatic, and I felt crushed.  Outwardly I was happy and told everyone how thrilled I was to no longer have that responsibility, but inwardly I was pretty deflated.  I didn’t realize it, but I had tied a big part of my self worth to handling this project and being super busy with this project and telling people about how swamped I was with this project, and when it was gone, my self worth plummeted.


Now, if, upon reflection, you realize you’re in a similar boat and tying your self worth to things you’re doing or roles you’re playing, I don’t want you to beat yourself up about it.  Self flagellation is not necessary or helpful.  But I do want you to be aware of it so you can start to disentangle yourself from it.


So, subtraction isn’t our default, but it can be a really empowering strategy in our personal and professional lives.  I saw an instagram reel the other day where John Hattie was talking about cutting the New Zealand curriculum in half.  If you’re not familiar with John Hattie, he’s a New Zealand education researcher and professor who’s probably best known for his series of books on visible learning and teaching.  In the reel he said when students study fewer things, they can go deeper with those fewer things and that turns them on to learning.  I could not agree with this more!  We know this as educators!  Trying to cram a ton of standards into one school year does not serve students well, and it certainly doesn’t set them up to deeply understand, retain, and apply the information.  Subtracting some of that content could be so helpful!


A 2021 NIH (National Institutes of Health) study demonstrated the value of doing less through breaks in instruction.  The study showed that breaks not only help with learning, but they’re just as important as practice in learning a new skill because breaks (be they sleeping or waking) are “when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we…practiced.”  An article on the Psychology Today website says, “scientific and anecdotal evidence show that downtime is crucial not just to emotional and physical health, but also to our ability to think, accomplish difficult tasks, and be productive.”  Lastly, two studies involving 2,500 Iceland workers showed that “reductions in working hours maintained or increased productivity and service provision [and] improved workers’ well-being and work-life balance.”


Subtracting and doing less frees up mental, emotional, and physical bandwidth.  It replenishes energy, decreases stress and burnout, and increases creativity.  It empowers us to focus more deeply on the things that remain.  The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius said that we should “occupy [ourselves] with few things … if [we would] be tranquil.”  He felt that most of what we think about and do is unnecessary and should be eliminated to allow us to focus only on necessary things (see Meditations, 4.26).  Computer scientist and author Cal Newport calls this the surprising math of doing less.  He says, “if you have less things on your plate, you can spend more time on the things that remain.  Spending more time on the things that remain will generate much more value than if you instead spread that same time over many more things.”


So, there are clearly lots of benefits to doing less, to subtracting.  With all that said, though, I don’t mean to imply that adding is always bad.  Adding can, of course, be useful, so you don’t need to stop adding altogether.  Just consider subtraction before adding anything.


Now, I realize that as an educator mom, you probably don’t need convincing as to the value of subtraction and doing less.  You very likely already want to do less, and you’re just not sure where or what you can subtract.  So I’m going to give you some ideas to get you started.


Let’s start with some mindset-related things.  And I’m starting with mindset because it drives everything else.  Your mindset is the operating system for your life.  If you think about an operating system on your phone or computer, it’s the thing running in the background that allows all of the other programs or apps to run.  If the operating system is buggy, the apps won’t run right.  They’ll freeze or they’ll crash.  So, if you want different aspects of your life to run more smoothly, the best place to start is with your mindset.


OK.  The first thing I’ll suggest is media, as in podcasts, YouTube, Instagram, and so on.  And you might be thinking, “Wait, I thought you said we were talking about mindset.  How does media relate to that?”  And I’m so glad you asked!  Media literally feeds ideas, images, and sounds into our brain.  Our brain is the hardware that runs our mindset, so what we feed into our brain is going to impact our mindset – especially if we’re feeding our brain a lot of something.


I love podcasts, so it is really easy for me to overconsume that type of media.  But I’ve noticed that when I consume, consume, consume, my enjoyment and retention of what I’ve listened to goes down.  It’s harder for me to process what I’ve heard when I’m listening to a lot of different voices in a short timespan.  Ideas get muddled and I experience more confusion.


I’ve also noticed that when I’m binging a lot of podcast episodes or Instagram or YouTube, I’m less present in my life.  I’m less aware of what’s happening with my family and I don’t engage with them as much because I’m walking around with my airpods in all the time.  I’m less inclined to reach out or go do stuff with friends.  I’m also less inclined to do other things like prepare this podcast, or practice my guitar or piano, or read, or journal.  I’ve found that decreasing my media consumption helps with all of that.


The next suggestion is related to the last one, but it’s to subtract accounts and content that don’t light you up, that don’t inspire and uplift you.  If you have a bunch of negativity showing up in your feed – things that inspire anger, hatred, or disgust, for example – swipe away from those as quickly as possible to retrain the algorithm to stop sending them to you.  A while back I noticed I was getting a lot of “Karen” and hate-filled political videos in my IG feed, and I realized I kept getting more because I kept watching them.  When you stop to look at things on any social media platform, the algorithm takes note and feeds you more of that thing.  And I know that’s kind of creepy, but it’s also kind of cool because you can retrain it to feed you different content.  Do you know what dominates my Instagram feed now?  Dad jokes and reels about teacher humor, Jane Austen, animals, and faith.  The algorithm randomly feeds me other things to see if I’m interested, and if I watch those things, I’ll start getting more.  If I don’t, I stop seeing them.  It’s pretty freakin’ amazing!


To anyone who thinks you need to watch the political stuff or breaking news so you can stay current with the world, I really want you to question that.  Is that true?  First of all, do you need to stay current with everything?  What’s the worst that can happen if you don’t stay up on everything?  Second, how is staying current with that kind of content affecting you?  Is it lighting you up and uplifting you?  Is it inspiring you to do good in the world, to be a positive influence?  Is it helping you feel more joy and connection?  If it’s not, if it’s angering or depressing you, how is that helping you?  How does it help you to be informed and angry?  What’s the upside of that?


And I’m not saying you need to stick your head in the sand and be ignorant of what’s going on around you, but beware of the idea that your only choices are to consume everything or nothing.  You can absolutely figure out a balance that works for you – one that allows you to be informed and stay in a good headspace and mood.  Because one thing I absolutely know for sure is that when you feel better, you do better.  And feeling better starts with your mindset and what you’re feeding your mind.


You can consider subtracting things to pay attention to or worry about.  Your time and mental and emotional bandwidth are precious, limited resources and should be protected.  So if you’ve been worrying about something you have no power to control, you can choose to accept what is and let that worry go.


All right.  Let’s move on to some physical things.  You can consider subtracting financial obligations.  For example, do you need five different credit cards or do you need three different streaming services and cable?  Because here’s the thing - each of those is taking up time and space in your head.  It takes time and effort to make sure all of those bills are paid each month, to monitor the different credit card balances, and so on.  So maybe you want to subtract and simplify a little.


Next, how about dinner menu options?  If you’re trying to feed your family something different every night so they don’t get bored, I promise that’s not necessary.  You could ask your family to give you a list of their, say, 10 favorites and rotate through those (include some of your favorites, too) and that will simplify shopping and meal prep for you.  Of course you can add other things in if you want and if you have the bandwidth, but if you don’t, subtract and set yourself free.


How about pantry items?  Do you need five different kinds of oil, seven different vinegars, and four kinds of flour?  And will you use all of those before they go bad?  Now, if you love cooking and baking and you want to keep all of those things, this advice is not for you!  But if you don’t, give yourself permission to subtract.


OK.  How about email subscriptions?  Maybe you signed up with a company to get a discount code and you never open their emails anymore.  Unsubscribe!  Subtract them from your inbox.  Yes, you can just delete them, but why?  It’s simpler to not have them hit your inbox in the first place, and you can always re-subscribe later if you need or want to.


Next, after school activities and commitments.  If you’re running yourself ragged trying to manage different kids’ schedules and your own, you can choose to cut some things out…even if your kid is disappointed.  I promise your child’s life will not be ruined if they can’t do piano and soccer and dance and gymnastics.  Downtime is super important for kids, just like it is for adults, even if society glorifies overscheduling them.


OK.  This last idea is specific to work.


How about school programs, projects, initiatives, or practices?  Some of this is directed more to administrators, because not every educator has the power to cut programs or initiatives from a school or district.  And sometimes cutting programs requires cabinet, school board, or governmental approval.  I get that.  But education is very bloated with programs and practices that don’t serve students and that hinder the process of education.


I’m not saying these programs or practices aren’t well-intended.  But well-intended or not, when they don’t return a useful result, when they require so much overhead and time to implement that they get in the way of better things, when they tie up staff with red tape and paperwork so they have less time to teach and build meaningful relationships with kids, they end up doing more harm than good.


Now, is it easy to cut programs and practices?  No.  I get that this is a tricky one.  Politics and emotions get involved, and people get very attached to programs after investing a lot of time and energy into them.  But it is 1,000% worth considering.  So, whether you’re a teacher or administrator, I invite you to consider if there are things under your purview that are not providing a good return on investment and could be cut or simplified.  How about meetings?  Messages to staff and parents?  Homework?  Curriculum?  Forms or paperwork?  Classroom, school or district procedures?  And please recognize that sometimes you need to cut good things so you can focus on things that are better.  Your time is precious.  Your students’ time is precious.  Your parents’ time is precious.  What can you do to make the best of all of them?  You can’t do everything, but you can do something, so focus on what you can control.


OK.  Hopefully those suggestions helped you come up with an idea or two, but please don’t think you need to do all of them.  Just pick something you think will work for you and go from there.  Big results come from small, consistent actions.


I do have one more resource you can use to get subtraction ideas and that is my free mini course “3 Secrets to Less Stress as an Educator Mom.”  When you sign up, I’ll send you three short videos, each one containing a powerful secret to help you feel less stressed and more empowered.  You can sign up at training.kerimartinez.com/3-secrets.  And I’ll put the link in the show notes to make it easy for you to find.


Before I sign off, what’s one thing that shifted your perspective in this episode?  One thing that inspired or challenged you?  Or one thing you want to share with another educator mom?  Text me through the link in the show notes or DM me on Instagram @kerimartinezcoaching.  I’d love to hear your thoughts!  And finally, remember to go to training.kerimartinez.com/3-secrets to sign up to get the “3 Secrets to Less Stress as an Educator Mom” and I will see you next week!


Thank you for listening to this episode of the Empowered Educator Mom podcast!  To see show notes and a transcript, go to kerimartinez.com/podcast.  That’s k-e-r-i-m-a-r-t-i-n-e-z dot com forward slash podcast.  If you have a comment or a question you’d like to share, you can text me through the link in the show notes, and if you loved the episode, please share it with another educator mom.  Grab the link and text it, email it, or post it on social media.


Have an amazing week everyone.  I’ll talk to you soon.




bottom of page