The Only Way Out Is Subtraction
How Subtraction Creates the Space Addition Never Could
In my last piece, You Can’t Do All the Things (And That’s Not a Personal Failure), I argued that most advice collapses the moment you attach time to it.
Yes, many of the things we’re told to do are good things.
But once you put them on a calendar, the math stops working.
The missing step in almost all of that advice is simple and uncomfortable:
You have to decide what you’re not going to do.
That same idea shows up even more clearly when we talk about money, stress, and survival mode.
Survival Mode Is a Math Problem, Not a Mindset Problem
Survival mode isn’t defined by income level.
It’s defined by spending more than you make, financially or emotionally, over time.
You can be in survival mode at a low income or a very high one.
What matters is whether there’s any margin.
Survival mode feels like:
bills chasing paychecks (and occasionally catching them)
no room for mistakes
every unexpected expense creating panic
decisions driven by urgency instead of intention
When you’re there, most advice sounds like noise.
Not because it’s wrong, but because it assumes you have space you don’t actually have.
The Weight Tied to Your Ankle
High-interest debt is one of the clearest examples of this.
It’s not a moral failure.
It’s not a lack of discipline.
It’s a weight tied to your ankle while you’re trying to swim to shore.
You can kick harder.
You can get stronger.
You can even make progress for a while.
But part of every effort is being canceled out.
That’s why survival mode is so exhausting.
The work doesn’t feel like it’s working.
Why Addition Feels Like the Answer (and Usually Isn’t)
When people are underwater, addition feels like hope.
A raise.
A side hustle.
A new credit card.
“Once I make a little more, this will calm down.”
It almost never does.
And sometimes addition does help.
But very often, addition arrives already pre-spent.
Raises disappear into existing obligations.
Side hustles consume the little time and energy you had left.
Credit cards widen the gap while pretending to solve it.
Nothing structural changes.
The system stays overloaded.
Subtraction Is the Exit
Subtraction is uncomfortable because it looks like going backward.
It forces trade-offs into the open.
It feels like loss.
It triggers scarcity alarms.
That’s why people avoid it.
But subtraction is the only move that actually creates space.
Not optimization.
Not balance.
Not better habits.
Space.
Space in cash flow.
Space in your calendar.
Space in your nervous system.
Subtraction lowers the water level so you can breathe again.
What Subtraction Looked Like for Me (Early On)
When I first got out of college, I did the math and realized I only needed about $800 a month to live.
That was rent, utilities, food. Everything.
I laugh when I think about that number now, but it was a powerful realization at the time.
That wouldn’t cover a security deposit in most cities today, but at the time it worked.
Because once I knew my “enough,” I could see something else:
If I earned $4,000 in a job, I could live for five months without working.
That kind of freedom felt like everything to me.
I had no problem working long days for a month or two if I knew I could take the next five months off afterward.
And I did just that.
That sense of financial control, the ability to eliminate work from my life for a period of time, showed me very early on how closely money and freedom are connected.
Not because I had a lot of money.
Because I had subtracted my expenses down to where a little money bought a lot of time.
Leverage Matters (in Budgets and in Life)
When people want to reduce expenses, no one starts with dish soap. Or sponges. Or arguing about paper towels.
We look at housing, transportation, and food because those categories make up about half of most budgets.
That’s where leverage lives.
Time works the same way.
If you want to own more of your life, shaving minutes won’t get you there.
The leverage is in the largest blocks.
Sleep and work.
Most people protect work at all costs and sacrifice sleep instead, even though sleep protects health, clarity, and longevity.
That’s not a personal failure.
That’s a power imbalance.
What Subtraction Looked Like for Me (Mid-Career)
For years, I worked as a wedding photographer on the side.
I was good at it. I made solid money doing it.
Which made it very hard to admit how tired I was.
Every summer, I negotiated around long days, eight to ten hours of coverage per wedding, plus editing time afterward.
At some point, I realized I didn’t need that income anymore to sustain our path toward financial stability.
So I stopped.
Part of me still liked photography. But if I’m honest, I think I mostly liked it because I knew I was good at it and could make good money at it.
Subtracting that income meant subtracting an entire category of mental stress.
No more negotiating weekends.
No more summer burnout.
No more splitting my attention between two careers.
That’s leverage.
One decision. One subtraction.
An entire block of time and energy returned.
Subtraction Isn’t Deprivation If You Can See the End
Subtraction without meaning is deprivation.
Subtraction with a clear goal is strategy.
If you can’t see what the subtraction is for, it will feel like punishment.
But when the goal is:
getting out of high-interest debt
creating a buffer
regaining stability
buying back time
Then subtraction becomes temporary discomfort in service of permanent relief.
We Already Understand This With Money
We already understand this logic with money.
If you didn’t have to pay for housing, transportation, or food, your entire financial life would feel different.
Not optimized. Different.
The same is true with time.
If your life didn’t require income to continue, removing a job from your week would change everything.
Not because work is bad, but because obligation is heavy.
Most people don’t struggle to imagine this because it’s impossible.
They struggle because it’s been culturally ruled out.
When Your Job Becomes Optional (Even If You Keep It)
A few years ago, my wife and I did the math and realized something startling.
If we both stopped working, we’d be okay for a couple of years.
Not forever. Not luxuriously. But okay.
No one was buying a boat.
We didn’t quit our jobs.
But the feeling changed immediately.
We were no longer owned by our work.
We had choice.
That optionality allowed me to look critically at what I was doing and decide whether it was actually valuable, not just necessary.
And here’s what most people don’t realize:
You don’t need years of runway to feel this shift.
When you have even one month of expenses saved, you’ve exited survival mode.
You’re no longer living paycheck to paycheck.
Your head is above water.
Your heartbeat steadies.
Your breath comes easier.
When work stops being a condition for survival and starts being a choice, even a constrained one, everything feels different.
Not because you stop working.
Because fear left the room.
Why So Few People Even Let Themselves Imagine It
Many people don’t reject this idea because they don’t want it.
They reject it because survival mode doesn’t leave room to imagine alternatives.
When income feels fragile:
dreaming feels irresponsible
long-term thinking feels unsafe
wanting time feels indulgent
So people stay small in their thinking, not from lack of ambition, but from lack of margin.
What Subtraction Is Really For
Subtraction isn’t about having less.
It’s about removing what stands between you and the life you actually value.
It’s about making the load lighter.
And the moment you remove the weight, even slightly, you feel it.
The water gets calmer.
The math starts to work.
Time stretches again.
That’s not deprivation.
That’s the beginning of freedom.
Quiet freedom. The kind that doesn’t post well on social media.
Where Subtraction Becomes Real
Subtraction doesn’t start with dramatic moves.
It usually starts small. Small enough to feel manageable, but meaningful enough to change the math.
In the next piece, I want to zoom in on a single number: $100.
Not because $100 is magical, but because it’s concrete.
Because when you subtract $100 from your expenses and redirect it intentionally, the ripple effects are larger than most people expect.
That’s where subtraction stops being philosophical and starts becoming practical.