On subtraction as the harder move
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
He is describing aeroplanes, and the engineering makes the point sharper. Adding is how a designer demonstrates effort; removing is how the machine is made to fly, and it looks from outside like having done less.
Carried over to a day, a room, a piece of writing, the difficulty is the same. Everything present can be justified by whoever put it there. The question of what could be gone entirely is one almost nobody is asking.