The one question every crisis forces you to ask

Every entrepreneur I know has a “Covid story.”

When the world shut down, my business owner friends all did the same thing:

They cut. Fast.

Expenses, projects, clients that weren’t worth the energy, commitments they’d been carrying for years “just because.”

They didn’t have a choice. Cut or lose the business.

And when things opened back up and the dust settled;

The ones who survived were leaner, sharper, and more profitable than before the crisis even started.

Not because they added something new.

Because they finally removed what was in the way.

This isn’t just a Covid thing. It’s a pattern.

Every crisis does this to entrepreneurs. A cash crunch. A failed launch. Burnout. A health scare.

The crisis forces you to ask the one question you’ve been avoiding:

What can I stop doing?

And every single time, the answer makes everything better.

Researchers at the University of Virginia actually studied this. They call it “Subtraction Neglect.”

When people are asked to improve something like an itinerary, a design, a plan, they almost always add. More features. More steps. More rules.

Almost nobody removes anything. Even when removal is the faster, cheaper, better path.

Our brains literally don’t consider subtraction as an option.

That’s why a crisis works. It overrides the instinct. It forces removal because survival demands it.

But you don’t need to wait for survival mode.

You can try it now.

Take a piece of paper. Two columns.

STOP: What drains your energy or time but produces little or no results?

CONTINUE: What’s actually moving your life or business forward?

Then go to your calendar and your to-do list. If it’s not on the CONTINUE list, remove it.

You’ve heard the saying “if you want something done, give it to a busy person.”

It’s true. But not because busy people are superhuman.

It’s because they’ve already been forced to cut. They only have room for what matters.

You can create that clarity right now. Today. Without a crisis.

Subtract first. Then build.

Things move faster when there’s less in the way.

Till next week,

Noemi