If you’ve made it this far, you may already feel it: this work doesn’t behave like a checklist.
It doesn’t ask you to install new habits or memorize a philosophy. It doesn’t promise a one-and-done fix. What it asks for instead is something both simpler and more demanding — a shift in how you understand effort, success, and change.
This video is where I name that explicitly: Subtract to Succeed is a paradigm shift.
Why This Matters
In systems thinking, there’s a hierarchy of leverage points.
You can tweak the elements of a system.
You can optimize the flows.
You can rearrange the structures.
But if you want to change how a system actually behaves (how it performs under pressure, how it feels to live inside it, what outputs and outcomes it generates) the most powerful lever is the paradigm itself.
That’s what this work is doing.
We’re living in a polycrisis. The world is changing around us, and we’re changing within it. The old rules for effort — more discipline, more optimization, more output — are breaking down not because we’re weak, but because the context has changed.
STOP, DROP, and ROLL aren’t just steps. They’re expressions of a different worldview — one that treats your life as a complex, adaptive system rather than a machine to be managed.
Learning Objectives
In this video, you’ll learn:
Why Subtract to Succeed is a paradigm shift, not a productivity method
How systems thinking explains why this approach actually works
Why this is a lifelong practice, not a 100-day makeover
What This Looks Like in Real Life
I share several personal examples in this video — not as a manual for you to follow, but as indicators of how this actually works.
After closing my company in 2021, I dropped something that looked, from the outside, like my entire career. What opened up instead was space. Space to notice what still worked, what wanted to fall away, and what gold remained to be rolled forward.
I dropped management (day-to-day oversight that drained my energy, not leadership or mentorship) and found myself in collaboration with someone who brought complementary genius I didn’t even know I needed.
I leaned into writing and Substack as my primary platform, not because it was “the rule,” but because it resonated. And the ripple effects have been extraordinary.
I even dropped rules themselves. The unspoken rules of entrepreneurship, thought leadership, and personal branding that never quite fit me. And therefore never really worked!
Each of these wasn’t a leap. It was a STOP. A DROP. And then, slowly, a ROLL.
