Additive Bias—and how it could be affecting your productivity

Anthony Sanni on additive bias and how it hurts problem solving

You are in the business of solving problems. But there is quirk in our minds that affects how we solve problems—and not always in a good way. Learn more abut additive bias and how to overcome it in this video.

Prefer to read? See the blog article adapted for easier reading from the transcript of the video below. Hope it helps!

Video Transcript

You are in the business of solving problems. That is how you create value. Whether you are writing books or writing reports... whether you are designing bridges or designing interfaces... whether you are managing projects or managing people... You create value by solving problems. And the more interesting the problems you solve are, the more value you create, and the more value you get back in return.

Understanding our patterns for solving problems will help us notice when we're doing things a certain way, perhaps not the best way.

But what if I told you that there was a quirk in your mind, in my mind, in most people's minds that significantly hampers our ability to solve problems? Would you be interested in learning what it is? Would you be interested in finding out how to overcome that quirk in your mind? What's that you say? You are? Well then, let's talk about it.

Hi, my name is Anthony Sanni. And on #beenthinking, I share productivity and personal development insights to help you achieve your best in life, career and business. And I have been thinking a lot about how we tend to solve problems.

Understanding our patterns for solving problems will help us notice when we're doing things a certain way, perhaps not the best way.

There are many things that can affect how we solve problems. But today I want to talk about one that speaks directly to doing more by doing less.

So what is the quirk? What is this tendency that hampers how we solve problems? Well, it's simply known as “additive bias”. And in this video, we'll talk about what it is, why it probably exists, the consequences of it. And most importantly, the solutions to overcome it.

What is Additive Bias—and how it hurts productivity

Additive bias is simply the tendency when we're faced with a problem, for human beings to favor adding components, adding pieces, adding things instead of taking things away as a means of solving the problem.

Research coming out of the United States as recently as about two years ago shows this. In a paper titled “People Systematically Overlook Subtractive Changes”, researchers found that over the course of eight experiments, people systematically default to searching for additive transformations and consequently overlook subtractive transformations.

This is important to note because the research paper goes on to say that this tendency is not great. Defaulting to searches for additive changes may be one reason that people struggle to mitigate overburdened schedules, institutional red tape, and damaging effects on the planet.

Perhaps you can relate.

So now that we know what additive bias is, let's talk about perhaps why it even exists in the first place.

Where does Additive Bias Come from?

It goes back to the human tendency to think more is more. And there are echoes of this in the research as well. Going back to our evolutionary past, having more things generally meant being better off. More people, more material possessions...

But things have changed in the 21st century. Value is not always created by more. Sometimes less is more.

Additive Bias and the complexity trap

So what are some of the consequences of additive bias? Well, the most obvious consequence, aside from the fact that it could actually increase stress, is it increases complexity.

The more you add steps to a process or a product, the more you add components to machinery... You are increasing the complexity of that thing.

And when it comes to doing more by doing less, increasing efficiency, increasing effectiveness--personally and in organizations... Complexity is not your friend. It's not your friend.

You want to keep things simple and streamlined so that they're easier to tweak and improve upon to create even more value, hopefully with less effort.

How to Beat Additive Bias—it’s starts with a mindset shift

So now that we know what additive bias is and its consequences and also where it might have come from in our nature, how do we overcome additive bias? And I'm going to go ahead and give you a little pro tip here.

People tend to add components quickly, and tend to default to additive bias the more complicated or the more mentally tasking a problem is.

People tend to add components quickly, and tend to default to additive bias the more complicated or the more mentally tasking a problem is.

So that's the clue right there—every time you're faced with a problem and your first instinct is, “Oh, this is hard, let's just add this and solve it”…

Stop. Catch yourself and consider—are you taking a shortcut? Should you instead be thinking about subtracting things?

And this applies to our organizations as well as to us as individuals. Every time you face a problem, things are not going well, things are difficult, things are challenging. Always stop yourself from immediately jumping to adding something and ask yourself - “what can I remove to make this easier?”

And that gets you into a whole new mind space of approaching things a different way so that you can be more creative.

Addition by design

A little disclaimer here: sometimes adding things is absolutely the right thing to do, but not by default. Let it be instead by design—when you have actually considered, at least with equal weight, the possibility of solving the same problem by taking something away.

Until the next episode of #beenthinking, I am still your friend Anthony Sanni encouraging you be your best, do your best and I'll see you in the next episode. And hey, if there's anything you want me to talk about in this video series, go ahead and leave a comment down below and let me know what you're interested in, and I'll see how I can make a video about it to help you.

But until then, take care and bye for now.