In December 2019 I wrote a post about happiness with one genuinely good idea buried in it. Here’s the passage, lightly cleaned up — it was the most alive thing I wrote that whole year:
If you have a toothache. You can watch a movie, buy a phone, hang out with someone — whatever — the throbbing toothache will remind you all through the day. The only relief is when you get it fixed at the dentist. Nothing else works. Just see the dentist already and get it done.
The idea: we try to get happier, richer, and better by adding — the new purchase, the new tactic, the new goal — when the actual lever is removing the thing that’s draining us. Addition gives you a spike that decays. Removal gives you a gain that compounds, because the drain is gone tomorrow, and the day after, without you doing anything further.
In 2019 I could only prove this with a small example: auditing subscriptions and saving $200 a month. True, but trivial. Seven years later I can show you that every significant thing I’ve built since started not with something I added — but with something I removed.
The ledger
I removed the model where commissions chose the content. For years my site recommended other people’s products for commissions — supplements, software, crypto exchanges — and the honest description is that the links were the point and the writing was the wrapper. Removing that felt like burning down an income stream. What it actually did was make the writing ownable. To be precise about what remains: a couple of links on this site are still affiliate links — the hosting and email tools the site visibly runs on, disclosed where they appear. The rule that separates them from 2019: the recommendation must predate the commission. I chose those tools, paid for them, and built on them before any link paid me; the sentence would read identically without the commission. In 2019, the commission wrote the sentence. (I’ve written about this era in full — the post I pinned to the top of my old site.)
I removed an entire investment philosophy. For years, I preached defensive dividend stocks and published the doctrine. Today I hold zero — one accumulating total-world fund, for me, for my children’s plans, for the trust I’m designing. The removal wasn’t just of holdings; it was of the activity — screening, monitoring, reinvesting, the feeling of doing something. What replaced it is boring on purpose. (Also written up in full elsewhere on this site.)
I removed my own platform dependency. I was on free blogspot, then free wordpress, then on-off-love-hate with SBI and then paid wordpress then Substack and now, back to WordPress proper. One thing I can say with certainty why I went off substack is that publishing on a rented platform meant the audience relationship ran through someone else’s terms. Migrating to owned infrastructure was weeks of unglamorous work to end up with — visibly — less: fewer features, no network effects, no discovery feed. And full ownership of the only asset that matters, the list.
I removed people. This is the one I won’t itemize, because the people are real and this site doesn’t put real people on trial. The pattern-level truth: there were relationships where the data, accumulated over years, said the cost to my household was structural, not situational. Forgiveness was extended — that’s a heart decision, and it’s done. Access is a separate decision, made on evidence. Removing access was the hardest subtraction on this list, it was carried with grief rather than bitterness, and it freed more capacity than every other item combined.
I removed bad business. This is the one I won’t itemize, because the people and the businesses are also real and I dont want to put them on trial…but clear as night and day, when I discover people or businesses that work in patterns that I disagree with that’s obviously deep in gray or even black areas, with no clear turnaround or redemptions, I will distance and remove myself from them as soon as possible. I will even cut loss and capitulate just to free myself from such encumbrances and entanglements, cos these tend to be such a waste of time, energy and money…and especially potential.
I removed myself. From treatment rooms and front desks I had already systematized. I stopped seeing/treating patients (I’m still requested by patients and doctors) since 2023. A clinic group where the founder is the bottleneck is a job with extra steps. Every removal of me from operations was what created the capacity to build the next thing — more systems, more growth, more stability and of course, even nigelchua.com.
Why subtraction outperforms addition
Three reasons from the operator seat, not the philosophy books:
- Removals are one-time decisions with permanent yield. An addition — a new habit, product, channel — needs ongoing energy to maintain. A removal needs energy once. The subscription stays cancelled. The model stays retired. Maintenance cost: zero. That’s the asymmetry.
- Drains compound, so removing them compounds. A negative isn’t a fixed monthly fee. The toxic dynamic gets worse with tolerance. The wrong business model digs its hole deeper each year you feed it. Removing it early isn’t saving you X — it’s saving you X growing at some rate for the rest of your life.
- Addition is the default because it photographs well. New things get announcements. Removals are invisible — there’s no launch post for a thing that no longer exists. Which is exactly why subtraction stays underpriced: nobody gets applause for it, so almost nobody competes with you for it. (This is the same reason preventive competence is undervalued against theatrical crisis resolution — the best moves leave nothing to point at.)
The diagnostic
When I’m deciding what to do next — in the businesses, the portfolio, the family calendar — the first question is no longer “what should I add?”
It’s:
“What is the toothache?”
What’s the recurring drain that no addition can compensate for? Name it. Then check whether the last six months of additions were actually anesthetic — things bought, started, or scheduled to avoid the dentist’s chair.
The 2019 version of me knew this principle well enough to write it down between affiliate links. The proof took seven more years, and every entry in the ledger above. Start your own ledger with one entry.
The hardest one, ideally — once that one’s out, the rest are just easier.