Balance & Beyond Podcast

Are you drowning in an endless sea of more?

More work, more expectations, more skills required—all while racing against diminishing time and resources? What if I told you that success isn't coming from doing more, but is actually being stolen by it?

The dark art of strategic subtraction might just be the revolutionary approach you need. In this eye-opening episode, I challenge the fundamental belief that adding more to your plate leads to greater achievement. Instead, I reveal how intentionally doing less could be your secret weapon for getting ahead in our frantic, always-on world.

We explore the powerful metaphor of glass balls versus rubber balls—how we mistakenly treat all our responsibilities as fragile and irreplaceable when many will bounce back just fine without our constant attention. Through practical examples, you'll discover how to make emails shorter and more impactful, decline unnecessary meetings, batch your inbox time, and embrace the liberating mantra that "done is better than perfect."

But strategic subtraction isn't just about practical tactics—it's about identity. The real barrier preventing you from doing less isn't external demands but your internal programming that equates constant activity with safety, value, and significance. We dive deep into why this identity shift can feel so threatening and how embracing a new sense of self might be the most rewarding journey of your life.

Whether you're a corporate professional, entrepreneur, or anyone feeling overwhelmed by life's demands, this episode offers a fresh perspective on success that doesn't require running faster on an increasingly accelerating treadmill. Success isn't just about what you hold—it's about what you strategically subtract. Ready to redefine what matters and reclaim your time, energy, and peace of mind? This conversation is your starting point.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

Jo (00:06.058)

If you think doing more or adding more is the key to your success, then this episode is going to blow your mind. Today I'm going to be sharing how you can unlock the dark art of strategic subtraction and how perhaps doing less may be the key to you being even more successful. We're in an epidemic of more.

At the moment, more work, more expectations, more skills required, more learning. And so many women believe that they need to keep up. This means the hamster wheel or the treadmill is just getting faster. Layer on AI. And it seems like the need to upskill and stay on top of things and work at the speed of a robot is just fueling this collective level of frantic that we haven't seen in a really, really long time.

And that can be really scary because so many women I talk to say, Joe, I can't do more. I don't have any more in me. I am working like an absolute crazy person. And when I'm not working, I'm doing my unpaid work, whether it's booking the dog into the vet or taking the kids to the dentist or trying to look after my parents or whatever it may be. We cannot layer on any more.

And so what if the key is to actually take things out? Now, of course, your first reaction is like, I can't possibly take anything out, Jo, because everything's so important and I have to do everything. And yes, I know that feels really, really true, especially when you are likely trying to do more in an environment of less time, less resources, less budget and less everything else. So you are feeling squeezed and on a knife's edge, like you never have before.

Before I tell you why this can be so difficult, I wanna give you some examples of what doing less looks like. Because unfortunately, many women go, well, I have to hold all the balls. I have to take care of everything and everyone. And we think that they're all glass balls.

Jo (02:28.948)

We heard this metaphor before where we think that everything we do is a glass ball and if we break it, it's going to shatter. When in reality, many of them are rubber balls. Many of them will bounce just fine. And some are water balloons that are meant to burst because you were never meant to be holding them in the first place. So we think that everything we're holding is a glass ball. But I want you to hold on to the idea for just a second.

What if some of them are actually going to bounce and what if some of them are not yours to hold at all? So some examples of what strategic subtraction actually looks like. And the key hint here is in the word strategic, because not everything counts. When you're at work, what is the opportunity for you to make your emails shorter, make your reports shorter, make your documents smaller?

That's right, we think in the over explaining and giving all the reasons and over justifying everything that people will see our intelligence, that they will respect us more because we've explained everything. When in reality, there's one of these famous quotes that says, I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead.

Mastering the art of brevity and actually getting to the point will save you so much time. You cut out all the fluff, you cut out all the unnecessary pieces and just make it really, really clear what you want from someone. And the biggest changes I made in one of my jobs was I would start every email with at the top, like purpose of note, decision required for background information, for your information.

And I got so much feedback that, my gosh, this is making it. I love actually opening your emails because within one second, I can see what you are asking of me. We bury our requests because we worry that are we asking too much or I was just wondering if you've got me the report. No, your report was due yesterday. Can you advise me when you have it? So stop mincing words and subtracting words is going to make you infinitely more powerful.

Jo (04:49.266)

Our strategic subtraction is stop attending meetings, sessions, whatever you want to call them that don't move the needle over. think there's a recent report out from Microsoft, 60%. I want to say of meetings are called ad hoc with no purpose or agenda. Huge, huge time wasters. And what I love is that a CEO of one of Australia's major banks has actually just dictated that, where possible, all internal meetings are going to be 15 minutes and that all meetings must have a purpose, an agenda and action items.

Otherwise, it's just a nice discussion that's wasting everybody's time. So if a major bank of 30,000 employees can make a radical change like this, well, you can push back on a meeting that doesn't have an agenda, that can't tell you why it's been called and doesn't have any action items at the end, because the amount of time you are wasting stuck in meetings where you have to be there or you're there just for looks or you're there for show or you're there to support someone.

When I work directly with clients, we regularly find between five and 10 hours a week, if not more, by simply looking at their diary and going, do you really have to be there? Can you send a delegate instead? Can you have a five minute conversation with the person running the meeting to give your thoughts rather than sit through an hour and a half? And I guarantee you when pushed, vast majority of these meetings you don't need to be in.

The same CEO I'm mentioning has also launched recently, as part of this same overhaul of culture, is that all PowerPoint decks must be a maximum of five pages. Now, if you worked in anywhere else I worked, I rejoice. Everyone else goes, because every deck was 20 plus pages and it became this give them more information, give them more information.

And so much time was spent finessing the deck rather than actually working out what are we here to discuss? What is the decision or what's the recommendation and what is the crucial information that the people in the room need in order to support my recommendation or to voice it. And what bugged me the most was I would spend weeks and weeks finessing this bloody PowerPoint deck.

Jo (07:10.432)

And then I wouldn't get approved, but I was then asked to provide even more information and to bring it back next month to the meeting with the missing 12 pages of more information for them to make a call. And nine times out of 10, that information that I was being asked for was just to make the deck look prettier and to flesh it out. It had nothing to do with the decision. And I remember pushing them and saying, in principle, do you agree with this? Yes, yes, yes. But I want the deck!

I mean, for God's sake, what are we in a business that just produces decks? This is insane. So I love it when a large CEO says top down, we're gonna slash this. That would have saved me, I reckon 60 % of my time when I was in corporate. I got the nickname Pitch Bitch, because that's all I did. I just did Pitch Decks all day long.

I remember your investor decks, like for God's sake, and ANZ, this bank has a reputation as providing too much information. So how can you cut out stuff? How do you cut out all the filler work? This is strategic subtraction. Stop checking your damn emails. Get out of your notifications. The average worker receives 117 emails a day and it's interrupted every two minutes by notification. This is strategic subtraction at its finest.

If you can batch your time in your inbox to three times a day, you would be amazed at how much more productive and focused you're going to be. it no surprise that you start checking or having an interruption of some kind every two minutes and you wonder why when you have to sit down and focus on something, probably at 10 o'clock at night, you can't because your brain's going, Oh, check your email. Oh, there's a ping from New York. Oh, London's just come online. Oh, look at this. And then three hours goes by and you think, Oh, I'm not getting anything done. No shit, Sherlock!

You've trained your brain to be a squirrel. We have to take back control and learn to do less. And one of my favorite, favorite, favorite of all time recommendations on how to be more strategically subtractive is embrace done is better than perfect. You've already checked whether hexagons or octagons look better in your deck. Just go.

Jo (09:31.426)

Leave it. It doesn't matter. Yes, it can all be left aligned, but whether it's size 14 font or size 16 font, it doesn't really matter. The amount of finessing and it's 90 % there and I would then spend days and days going back and back and around and around and no, that one, that one, how should I say that?

The moment you can learn to do less and fire it off, you will be amazed at the focus, the opportunity, the respect and the authority and leadership that is going to arrive. These all sound really easy, right? Yeah, sure, Joe, I'll decline meetings. I'll send it done as better than perfect. I'll stop checking my inbox. But what actually stops us doing it? Because you're a smart woman. If you could do this really easily, you would have done it by now. There's this thing called an identity that is at our core.

And your identity is likely that you're a get shit done person. As a child, you were praised for achievements, for doing things, for getting stuff done. And what this means is you have hardwired recognition, praise, significance to output, to being in the meeting, to having somebody say your name.

And as part of this childhood conditioning our brain has basically said, okay, if I'm doing stuff, then I'm safe. If I'm doing stuff, I'm proving my value. I'm going to keep my job because I'm responding really, really quickly to everybody so that they know I'm on top of things and I've got it all under control.

The identity that says, I'm going to let that email sit there all day goes, think you're not in control, they're going to think you don't know what you're doing and then they're going to realize that you really don't know what you're doing and then you're going to get fired. And then if you get fired, you're not going to be able to pay your mortgage and then you're going to lose your house and you're going to be on homeless and then you're going be on the street and then you're to die. Dramatic, but this is the pathway that your brain takes. Doing is hardwired to safety. And this is why that impulse to go back and to check your inbox.

Jo (11:53.942)

Or to respond to something just quickly so that I can get it off my plate and stop thinking about it is directly tied to your internal safety mechanism. And not doing, not only is it lazy, but it also doesn't feel safe. Your nervous system can't handle it. So that's why you go back to your inbox and you respond to the thing and you show up to the meeting because you're afraid of what they're going to think if you say no. Are you better than them? Do you have more time than them? Are you more important than them?

So this is why strategic subtraction is a challenge to your identity and why it's not just about doing the things and saying no to the meetings. It's also about doing that deeper identity work to be the woman who creates a new identity. The one you have, the good girl who doesn't upset people, who doesn't rock the boat, that was actually given to you by... your parents, your family, your culture, your society, your generation.

And you don't realize that it's still running the show, but it's not actually who you are. And this can be the most confronting thing about doing this work is women come to me and say, yeah, Joe, but if I'm not the reliable one, if I'm not the helpful one, if I'm not the one who picks up the pieces after everybody else, who am I? What does that mean about me? What value do I have?

And that can either be a terrifying journey or it can be the most rewarding journey of your life that you will never, ever forget. This is why strategic subtraction feels rebellious and people tend to fall into more just attempted subtraction. It's not strategic. They try to do less for themselves. It's like, know I'll going to do strategic subtraction.

That's it, Jo. I won't take a walk. I won't have lunch. I won't take care of myself. I won't call that friend because you know what? I better call my parents or better do something else instead. So it's not about you subtraction about taking you out of your life because let's face it, you're already absent enough. This is about how we put you back in your life even more and strategically subtract the pieces that actually aren't adding value or that are more aligned to your old identity.

Jo (14:18.444)

The version of you who you used to be, not the version of you or the woman that you are now becoming. So this is your opportunity to look at your life and say two things. What can I strategically subtract? What actually isn't adding value? And the second and more important question is who am I if I don't have to do as much?

What is my identity as a woman who says no and actually takes care of herself? That is where the bigger work is. You spend more time doing that work. You find the right guides who can help you cultivate a new intentional identity. And this art as strategic subtraction becomes that much more doable, feasible, and you will have far more success with it.

So for today, I hope you've embraced the dark art of strategic subtraction and perhaps now success doesn't just have to be about what you hold, it's going to be about what you subtract. Let's try that last line again. And perhaps now you have a new belief. The success isn't just about what you hold, it's about what you subtract.