Weekly Wisdom #334 - What should you stop doing?

Addition by Subtraction, Via Negativa, Antifragile & Knowing What's Wrong

​

Happy Monday!

Every productivity article tells you what to add.

New morning routines. New apps. New habits.

I’m guilty of this too.

Something isn’t working? My first instinct is to pile more on top.

Not sleeping well? Add melatonin.

Stressed? Add meditation.

Falling behind? Add another system.

But lately I’ve been thinking about the opposite: what should I remove?

Nassim Taleb calls this via negativa. Improvement through subtraction.

The idea is that we know what hurts us way better than we know what helps. So avoiding the wrong things beats chasing the right ones.

Naval Ravikant puts it this way: “Being successful is just about not making mistakes. It’s not about having correct judgment. It’s about avoiding incorrect judgments.”

And Charlie Munger, with his usual bluntness: “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”

I’ve been testing this more deliberately.

Food: stop eating junk, and what remains is real food.

Productivity: fewer projects, not more systems.

Space: less stuff, more calm.

People: remove the draining relationships, and the good ones have room to breathe.

Addition is instinct. Subtraction is discipline.

What should you stop doing?

📚 Book Notes: Antifragile — Nassim Nicholas Taleb​

Taleb’s central idea: some things gain from disorder.

The opposite of fragile isn’t robust. It’s antifragile.

This book introduced me to via negativa and changed how I think about risk, health, and decision-making.

My favorite line: “Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. You want to be the fire.”

Dense but rewarding. Read it with a pen.

📖 Article: Via Negativa: Improvement By Subtraction — Wealest​

A solid explainer on via negativa with examples from Naval, Munger, and Buffett.

The Warren Buffett section stood out to me. His #1 rule isn’t “make money.” It’s “don’t lose money.” He’s obsessed with downside protection, not upside potential.

Quick read, useful mental model.

From the Blog

📝 5 Books That Changed How I Think About Work — Antifragile made the list. I wrote about what I actually took from it and four other books that stuck with me.

📝 The Rule of 100 — 100 days of consistent effort puts you in the top 5%. Subtraction works because it lets you focus that effort on fewer things.

📣 Quote

“Knowledge grows by subtraction much more than by addition—given that what we know today might turn out to be wrong but what we know to be wrong cannot turn out to be right.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

​