A partner at McKinsey once told me about a massive cost-cutting project at a company that used to operate very lavishly.
For example, on every floor, this company had multiple large printers. Had you asked, the staff would have probably insisted that every printer was essential.
So instead, the McKinsey team quietly disconnected some printers for a few days. And when nobody complained, they got rid of those printers permanently.
While this seems a bit heavy-handed, it offers an effective approach for finding whether something is essential — try eliminating it.
When Shopify wanted to cut down the time wasted on meetings, they did not go about building a company-wide consensus — that would have taken forever.
Instead, they auto-canceled meetings with three attendees or more, adding up to a whopping 3,22,000 hours of canceled meetings! And they told the employees to wait for two weeks before adding back any meetings, and to do so only if really, really critical.
While this would have surely caused short-term pain and disruption, overall, they likely ended up saving a lot of time.
I am not claiming that this is the best approach every single time. But sometimes, you do need a surgery.
Modern life has too much clutter. So try eliminating stuff. Only then will you know what you really need.
Everything else is junk that is weighing you down.
– Rajan