“Do I need it at all?”

I recently read William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, and this passage stopped me in my tracks:

“Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it. Unfortunately, this solution is usually the last one that occurs to writers in a jam. First they will put the troublesome phrase through all kinds of exertions—moving it to some other part of the sentence, trying to rephrase it, adding new words to clarify the thought or to oil whatever is stuck. These efforts only make the situation worse, and the writer is left to conclude that there is no solution to the problem—not a comforting thought. When you find yourself at such an impasse, look at the troublesome element and ask, ‘Do I need it at all?’ Probably you don’t.”

I highlighted the passage with a note: “This is life.”

Many of us undergo “all kinds of exertions” to shoehorn something new into our already full calendars. In those situations, a better solution might be to ask whether we need the new activity at all. 

We spend our critical weekend hours buying extra storage bins and reorganizing our closets to manage our possessions. Perhaps “Do I need it at all?” could prevent the need to put forth that effort.  

When making Thanksgiving dinner this week, we may be tempted to add one extra dish. But adding an extra dish, especially if it requires fussy methods and unique equipment, is probably the first step in ruining the cooking schedule and delaying dinner. (In my experience, that’s also the dish that no one in the family was asking for.)

According to Zinsser, the difficult sentence, activity, possession, or dish causes us so much grief because it is “trying to do an unnecessary job all along.” The effort and gymnastics to make the unnecessary items work never pay off because, even if we can fit them in, the extras ultimately detract from our larger aims.