“Being poor changes your thinking about everything” -
I came across this article today, which judging by the title seems to be
dealing with material scarcity, but actually covers precisely the opposite:
how generalizing the concept of scarcity allows insights to be ported among
very different fields. The most direct non-money example (and the relevant
one for this group) is the scarcity of time. In their words: “People think
they’re in the scarcity trap because they have too little money, or too
little time. That’s (…) not exactly true, because you’re always
accomplishing the same work. You’re just accomplishing it later. (…) It’s
not that you have too little time. You have the same amount of time; you’re
just one step behind.”
They mention the tunnel vision regarding long term consequences
(essentially the present self/future self duel) and the behavior of putting
off the fires, taking any bucket of water without looking at the strings
attached. They explain how this shortsighted behavior is one of the factors
making the scarcity and debt a cyclic problem, particularly with the
example about lonely people: the very fact that we’re fighting against the
perceived scarcity makes us focus on the wrong strategies and essentially
shoot ourselves in the foot, driving us deeper into the loop.
Anyway, I recommend reading the whole thing, as there are plenty of
insights and I’m probably not explaining the ones I got well enough. In
fact, please correct any misinterpretations I might have made in the
message above!
Cheers!