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Peter Drucker, the doyen of management theorists, was an advocate of "planned abandonment", so that resources that are tied up in marginal activities are freed for more profitable use.
管理学泰斗彼得·德鲁克倡导"有计划地放弃"，从而将在边际活动中被占用的资源释放出来，用于更能获利的地方。
Executives should, he advised, routinely ask the same question of every aspect of the business: "If we did not do this already, would we go into it now knowing what we now know?"
他建议高管们定期对各方面的业务提出同一问题："如果我们还没开始做这项业务，在我们了解目前的情况后，还会再继续吗？"
In "The Case for Good Jobs", a new book, Zeynep Ton of MIT Sloan School of Management argues that doing less can often make commercial sense.
麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院的泽内普·唐在其新作《为好工作辩护》中指出，通常来说做些减法是符合商业逻辑的。
Costco, a well-regarded American retailer that believes in the "intelligent loss of sales", has a deliberately limited product range. That means it can focus its buying power more effectively, forecast demand more accurately and use its employees' time more productively.
美国高口碑零售商Costco信奉"明智的销售损失"原则，刻意限制了产品种类。这意味着它可以更有效地集中购买力，更准确地预测需求，同时更高效地利用员工的时间。
Less may not sound like a great outcome for customers, but at some point choice is deeply wearying. When you have spent more time trying to decide what to watch on a streaming service than it takes to go to the cinema and watch "Oppenheimer" twice, scarcity seems pretty attractive.
对于客户来说，选择变少听起来可能不是件好事，但有时候做出选择也让人劳神费力。当你花在影视平台上选片子的时间比去电影院看两遍《奥本海默》的时间还要久，有限的选择看起来就很有吸引力了。
Doing and offering less goes against the grain in many ways. One is how humans are wired.
从多方面来看，"少做事少产出"这一理念有违常理，其中一个方面就是人类的天性。
Professor Ton cites a study, published in Nature in 2021 by Gabrielle Adams of the University of Virginia and her co-authors, in which people were asked to think of ways to improve something (like the design of a miniature-golf hole) or solve a problem (such as making the pattern on a grid symmetrical).
唐教授引用了由弗吉尼亚大学的加布里埃尔·亚当斯和她的合著者在2021年发表在《自然》杂志上的一项研究，这项研究要求人们想方设法改进一些东西（比如微型高尔夫球洞的设计）或者解决问题（比如让网格上的图案变得对称）。
The researchers found that, without an explicit prompt to think about subtraction, participants systematically defaulted to adding features rather than taking them away. There are plenty of other hurdles to embracing the minus mindset.
研究人员发现，由于没有明确提示人们可以做减法，参与者普遍默认需要查漏补缺，而不是删繁就简。要接受减法思维，还需要克服很多其他障碍。
The "sunk-cost fallacy" means that managers find it hard to abandon projects that have already soaked up money. Firms are often scared to give up optionality: what if this tiddly new venture turns into the next big thing?
"沉没成本谬误"意味着管理者很难放弃已经消耗了大量资金的项目。公司往往不敢放弃期权性风险：万一哪天这个小小的新项目就做大做强了呢？
Sending emails and filling the calendar is a way to feel busy even if not much of value is getting done. Recruitment processes and performance reviews reinforce the importance of additive activity; it is unusual for a job candidate to brag about the things they didn't achieve.
虽然发送邮件和写日程表并不会创造多少实际价值，但是也会让人感受到忙碌的充实。招聘过程和绩效评估让附加活动显得更加重要，如果求职者吹嘘自己没有完成的事情那才是不正常的。
But getting rid of work ought to be a vital part of the managers' toolkit. Add value. Do less.
但管理者理应把"减负"作为一个重要的管理工具。既要增加价值，也要减少工作。
