Everyone’s Selling You More. What If The Answer Was Always Less?
Stop adding. Start clearing.
I want you to think about the last time something in your life wasn’t working.
Maybe you weren’t sleeping well. Or you’d stopped exercising. Or your stress was through the roof and your eating had gone to shit. Or you were drinking too much.
What was the first thing you did?
I’ll guess: you tried to add something.
An app. A new routine. A supplement. A 30-day challenge. A habit tracker. A course. A podcast. A cleanse. A book.
Because that’s what we all do, right? Every single time.
Something’s not working, so we add. More structure. More tools. More effort. More systems. More discipline.
Nobody’s first instinct is to remove something.
Nobody looks at their busy life and thinks, “You know what would help? Less.”
There’s actually a name for this: additive bias.
Researchers at the University of Virginia found that when people solve problems, they default to adding rather than subtracting, even when removing something would be simpler, cheaper, and more effective (reference).
We’re literally wired to add. Which explains why you have 10 wellness apps on your phone and still feel like shit. Why your morning routine has 8 steps but you can’t get through step 3. Why you’ve bought the supplements, the journal, the running shoes, the meditation app, the meal prep containers, and yet here you are, googling “how to build better habits” at 11pm on a Tuesday.
It’s not that you’re not trying hard enough. You’re trying too much. Of the wrong things.
Meanwhile, your real life:
You wake up already behind. You check your phone before your feet hit the floor and immediately absorb 20 things that have nothing to do with you. Your morning is a blur of reacting. Your calendar is back-to-back. You eat something beige at your desk and call it lunch. By 3pm your brain is soup. By 7pm you’re too tired to do anything but too wired to rest.
So you pick your poison. The scroll. The wine. The takeaway you said you wouldn’t order again. Whatever gets you through to bedtime.
Somewhere in there you were supposed to go for a run, cook something nutritious, read that book that’s been on your nightstand for ages.
With what time? With what energy? With what space?
There isn’t any. That’s the actual problem.
And the entire wellness industry is making it worse. Every app, every guru, every influencer with a morning routine and a ring light is selling you the same thing: more. You keep buying, they keep selling, nothing changes, and somehow that’s your fault for not wanting it badly enough.
(Cool. Love that for us.)
I know this because I did it for years.
I was trying to shove healthy habits into a life that had absolutely no room for them. My calendar was packed. My head was worse. I was running on caffeine, cortisol, and way too much wine, smoking 20 a day and wondering why I couldn’t “just” meditate for 10 minutes.
Every time something didn’t work, I’d add something new. New plan. New app. Fresh start Monday.
And I never once thought to ask: what if the problem isn’t that I’m not doing enough? What if I’m doing too much of the wrong stuff?
So I stopped adding. And I started clearing.
Not in a dramatic “burn it all down” way. In a boring, quiet, one-thing-at-a-time way.
I stopped the 6am alarm before I tried to “build a morning routine.”
I stopped doom-scrolling before bed before I tried to “improve my sleep hygiene.”
I stopped trying to add healthy food on top of a lifestyle that was making me sick, and started removing the stuff that was making me sick in the first place.
And the thing I genuinely did not expect?
The habits I’d been trying to force for years started happening on their own. Not because I found more willpower. Because there was finally room.
And honestly? The room was the thing. Not the habits. The room.
When my head wasn’t full of noise, I could hear what I actually wanted. When I stopped performing “wellness” and just... cleared space, everything got lighter.
I didn’t become a different person. I just gave myself some room to show up.
You already know what that would feel like, don’t you?
So before you add one more thing, can I suggest something different?
Instead of asking “what should I do?”, ask “where’s the space for it?”
And if there isn’t any, make some.
You don’t need a habit tracker. You need space on your list. Remove the 3 habits that aren’t serving you anyway.
You don’t need a gym accountability partner. You need space in your morning. Stop going to a gym you hate that’s 40 minutes away and walk around your block instead.
You don’t need a “digital detox challenge.” You need space in your evenings. Delete 3 apps and charge your phone in another room.
I know. It sounds too simple. But simple is the whole point.
Two weeks ago I wrote about the voice in your head that tears you apart every time a habit breaks. Last week I wrote about Sunday You and Wednesday You, and how your plans were designed by someone who doesn’t have to live your actual week. This week: what you’re actually planning.
You can’t build from guilt (week one).
You can’t build for a person who doesn’t exist (week two).
And you can’t build on top of a life that has no room (this week).
Your experiment this week
Pick one thing you’ve been trying to add that keeps not sticking.
Don’t try harder. Instead, ask: what’s one thing I could remove that would make this easier?
Not “what should I add to support it.” What should go?
One last thing
Writing these last few weeks, I kept coming back to the same realisation. The guilt, the unrealistic plans, the constant adding. They’re not three separate problems. They’re the same problem, from three different angles.
And that realisation is the foundation of something I’ve been quietly building.
A framework for people who are done adding more to a life that has no room for it. For people who are ready to make space for what actually matters, instead of piling on more of what doesn’t.
It’s called the MAKE SPACE Method™, and I’ll tell you everything about it next Tuesday.
For now, just know this: it’s a weekend reset, not a 6-week programme. It’s built for real life. And it starts with the one thing nobody in the wellness industry will tell you to do: making space first.
More very soon.
Much love,
Noemie x
P.S: If this hit home, reply and tell me: what’s one thing you keep trying to add that you suspect you actually need to make space for instead? I read every single reply.
P.P.S: Want to be first to know when the MAKE SPACE Method™ goes live? If you’re already subscribed, reply with “I’m in” and I’ll make sure you’re first in line next Tuesday. If you’re new here, hit subscribe so you don’t miss it.