Less Is More…
As I get older, I’ve adopted less is more as a mantra. It applies to most things, especially where I see dysfunction.
I know I said I wouldn’t talk politics, so this may be a slight violation, but if the U.S. government spent less money, we’d get better service. More money means more agencies and less oversight. You simply can’t follow all that money, and billions get stolen or wasted.
And it’s not that people along the chain don’t care—it’s that they like it this way. They are stealing or wasting the money. They’re getting money, votes, power, or influence, and the system protects them. The people at the bottom of the line don’t have the political acumen or leverage to complain, and even if they did, the answer would be to spend more money to fix the problem.
Spend a heck of a lot less. Make states pick up anything beyond the bare minimum, and I’ll bet a ton of that fraud disappears. This isn’t new. Twenty years ago I represented clients who ripped off Medicaid. Same behavior, different scale.
The same principle applies to schools.
Trying to push through the curriculum and doing more work doesn’t improve learning. It kills student motivation and achievement. I hear so many colleagues talk about being “behind” in the curriculum. Behind what, exactly? According to whose calendar?
I’ll work on a topic until students actually master it, then move on. Less coverage is more learning. Learning is a lifetime thing. There’s plenty of time to “get through the curriculum,” and getting through it is far less important than students learning the underlying skills—how to read carefully, think clearly, ask good questions, and figure things out on their own. If they leave knowing how to learn, they’ll keep learning long after they’ve forgotten whatever unit we rushed through in March.
Political anxiety is another version of the same problem.
I wish there were a social movement to boycott social media, blogs, and 24/7 news. So much of it is click- and rage-bait. The authors don’t care. They want eyeballs, which lead to ad sales. Same with nonstop news channels. They have to fill the time even when there isn’t any news, and outrage keeps people watching. They’re selling soap.
If people stopped engaging—Twitter, BlueSky, Reddit, blogs—we’d deny them the eyeballs. Go outside. Get sun. Exercise. Play music. Make art. Read. Volunteer. There are endless things to do that don’t involve ramping yourself up over the outrage of the moment.
I’d make a horrible therapist. A friend mentioned how many clients she sees who are deeply anxious and depressed about the U.S. Really—Trump. (I live in a very liberal town.) If I were the therapist, I’d say: turn off the TV, delete the social media apps, and find one volunteer commitment a week. Tutor kids. Work at a soup kitchen. Whatever. Done.
I keep a daily habit tracker specifically to avoid doomscrolling: read for 30 minutes, play an instrument for 30 minutes, practice ASL. I’d tell them to do the same. Make brownies for a neighbor while listening to music instead of the news. Anything but feeding the beast.
Life isn’t that bad. The standard of living in the U.S. is fantastic. Access to medical care, technology, information—it’s not perfect and never will be, but too many people have a financial or political interest in keeping people outraged.
Honestly, when a friend shows full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome—or the right-wing version—I tend to think they’re being used and don’t realize it. Especially since most of them are educated, upper-middle-class, employed white people who aren’t personally suffering any of it. That doesn’t mean they can’t work for change, but the mental melt-downs seem both excessive, performative, and attention-seeking.
Less really is more.