Work, Parent, Thrive by Yael Schonbrun

Author:Yael Schonbrun [Schonbrun, Yael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Cuing Subtraction

If you’re like me (and every person who has landed on Marie Kondo’s doorstep), you get attached to shoes and jeans that no longer fit despite recognizing that they interfere with your goal of a tidy closet. Activities inside roles we care about can be even more painful to chuck. That’s understandable. Saying no to the meeting your boss put on your calendar, the invitation to attend a close friend’s birthday party, the volunteer role in your children’s school, or the pressure to take on additional hours at work can have real consequences.

Then again, so can saying yes.

Working-parent pressures offer a natural cue to ponder subtraction. You can take advantage of those cues in your personal and family life. You can practice being more deliberate about saying yes to activities you deem to be essential and no to areas that, for you, are unnecessary or unimportant. You can relish removing what is less critical by noticing how it gives you more resources to focus on what matters most.

You can also make the choice to subtract more accessible and habitual by creating routines that prompt subtracting. That might include weekly time set aside to consider what can be removed from your upcoming week. In weekly subtraction time, you can employ what our subtraction expert Leidy Klotz calls a “stop-doing list.” This list can even live right beside your to-do list. By bundling the two together, you can take advantage of the natural tendency to add to the to-do list by using it as a prompt to more deliberately refine your stop-doing list.

For me, stop-doing items in the parenting arena have been especially helpful. For instance, before becoming a parent, I had assumed my kids would have bar mitzvahs (a coming-of-age tradition in Judaism). But I didn’t anticipate that Hebrew school would be in addition to jobs, school, sports, and a desire for downtime. I also didn’t appreciate how much I hate hosting parties of any kind, let alone the huge affairs that typify bar mitzvahs in our town. And I hadn’t reflected on why the tradition of bar mitzvahs even mattered to me.

As I began to think more about subtraction, I considered the meaning of Hebrew school and bar mitzvahs for my family. I realized that my core value in this space was building community and connecting to ancient traditions. It struck me that Hebrew school offered neither because it was always such a rush job. The desired benefits weren’t emerging even though the efforts were inflicting a considerable cost. The knowledge about systematic subtraction neglect gave me the courage to pause Hebrew school. The experience that followed provided evidence of subtractive benefits, with reduced weekly overwhelm and freed-up financial resources and energy—some of which we use to foster spirituality and community in less burdensome ways. Subtraction did, indeed, offer my family more.

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