Irreducibility - Mental Model: Find the Floor

When we can't simplify any further.

Apr 30, 2026

Clients were insisting on adding 3 more engineers, expecting delivery to speed up proportionally. My favourite answer was that 9 women are not going to deliver a baby in 1 month. Adding more people to a project doesn’t scale linearly with delivery speed. Giving birth is an irreducible process.

Irreducibility is a mental model from systems thinking. It points to where further optimisations aren’t possible without breaking something. It reminds us not to waste energy optimising something that has already hit its floor limit.

The irreducible version of this article is just one sentence:
Irreducibility is the point where simplifying further breaks the thing itself.

When does an astronaut stop being recognised?

Writing at Work

Communication with words can serve as an example of irreducibility in action.

As simplification progresses:

“Hey man, can you please assign yourself the task we talked about on a call, it’s number 42”
“Please assign yourself task number 42”
“Take task 42”
“Take 42” — The last one breaks understanding. We don’t know what to take, unless tasks use a specific recognisable ID like PR-23 in some task management tools.

The last working example, “Take task 42”, is irreducible: remove any of those 3 words, and the sentence loses its meaning.

Removing unnecessary words aims to create an irreducible message. It’s about finding the right, and possibly, the lowest number of words that convey the meaning (”Remove” is the last step of my simple writing framework).

Irreducible communication is about delivering information.

Debugging Irreducibility

When dealing with process/project/situation:

What are the irreducible constraints here?
How to identify when we are reaching the floor limits?
What can’t be compressed?

Example: Onboarding Process

What are the constraints with onboarding:

the capabilities of people who need to acquire knowledge
time available for the process
availability of people they need to talk with

These constraints can’t be removed. I’ve onboarded hundreds of engineers. Watching videos at x2.0 speed may save some time, but some things just can’t be compressed:

Trust is not engineered. It’s built on how they behave, communicate, and operate. It’s built only when you work together. That’s onboarding’s irreducible floor.

Final Thoughts

Simplification or optimisation is different from irreducibility. The latter is about removing things until you can’t remove any more. But no further, or you break the meaning.

The perspective of irreducibility is a reminder that when you find an irreducible component, don’t bother with trying to optimise it. It helps you understand what really matters.

Thanks for reading,
— Michał

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