The Empty Space Theory

hey 👋 

Ever notice how the most expensive things are mostly . . . nothing?

A $500 Michelin plate gives you a dab of sauce and a staring contest with your reflection.

A sprawling mansion has more air per square foot than furniture.

A powerful speech? Half of it is silence, and yet somehow it fills the room.

Here's the thing about emptiness. It's not a void. It's a stage. The absence isn’t what matters. It’s what that space allows you to feel, or imagine.

Ma (間) (Pronunced: Mah) is the Japanese concept of negative space.

In Japanese aesthetics, the power of an object isn't in the object itself—it's in the empty space around it. It's why a single flower in a vast vase feels more powerful than a dozen crammed together.

The Power of Taking Away 

It's 1926. You're Coco Chanel, watching women struggle under layers of jewelry, frills, and corsets. The fashion industry's answer? Add more. More layers. More decoration. More everything.

Instead, Chanel did something radical: she subtracted.

She created the Little Black Dress—simple, unadorned, revolutionary. When other designers were adding complexity, she embraced emptiness. Before leaving the house, she famously advised, "Look in the mirror and take one thing off."

That philosophy built a $10 billion empire.

Fast forward to Apple. While other tech companies cram more buttons onto their devices, Apple obsessively removes them. The original iPod's genius wasn't what it added—it was what it eliminated. Today, the iPhone's most powerful feature might be what it doesn't have.

The $10 Million Whitespace

Google's homepage is famously empty. When every other search engine was adding news feeds, weather widgets, and stock tickers, Google gave users... nothing. Just a logo and a search bar. That emptiness saves Google about $10 million a year in bandwidth costs. Sometimes, nothing is worth millions.

• 👀 Presentations: Cut half your slides

• 👻 Products: Remove three features

• ✏️ Writing: Delete every third paragraph

• 🤝 Meetings: Cut the time in half

Real-world examples of profitable elimination:

• 🍔 In-N-Out Burger: Tiny menu, massive success. In 1948, the Snyders stumbled upon what I like to call the zen koan of fast food: what if less could actually be more? While their competitors were turning menus into Russian novels, they went full minimalist with just burgers, fries, and shakes. The beautiful irony? By doing less, they created a cult following that treats their "secret" menu like an underground handshake.

• 🚗 Volkswagen Beetle: Removed everything "non-essential". They asked themselves, "What if we kept only the parts that spark joy - or you know, actually make the car move?" It was automotive minimalism born from necessity (and maybe a dash of post-war austerity). While American cars were growing fins like mutant fish, VW stripped their Bug down to its skivvies, creating what became the automotive equivalent of a little black dress. The beautiful paradox? By embracing "poverty spec" as a design philosophy, they accidentally created one of the most beloved and recognizable cars in history.

• 🐤 Twitter: Limited messages to 140 characters. While every other platform was turning social media into an endless scroll of digital diary entries (looking at you, MySpace), they had a delightfully absurd thought: what if we treated words like Manhattan real estate? The 140-character limit wasn't just a quirky constraint - it was lifted directly from SMS messaging, because back then, phones were about as smart as a potato. But here's the beautiful accident: by forcing everyone to become a literary bonsai artist, trimming their thoughts down to their essence, they created the perfect cocktail of constraint and creativity.

The Empty Space Toolkit:

✓ Before adding anything, ask why you’re doing it

✓ Create power through absence 

✓ Let silence/space do the work

✓ When stuck, subtract

Thanks for embracing the power of dumb-thinking with me today!

SHARE YOUR SUBSTRACTION STORY WITH US: Tell me about a time removing something that made everything better. Best story wins our “Ma Innovation Workbook” AND a signed copy of "Dumbify"!

Stay elegantly empty, David

P.S. Know someone drowning in complexity? Forward this email—sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to empty your hands first.