6 ms·

How Scarcity Trap Affects Our Thinking, Behavior

72 points by marojejian 13y ago

PeterWhittaker 13y ago
tl;dr: When you have plenty of something, you can rationally plan how best to use it, perhaps entertaining and evaluating multiple scenarios - but when something is scarce, you tend to conserve it, doling it out piecemeal for only the most urgent needs. If that thing is time, you spend it - you spend your time - on the urgent only, foregoing the important but not urgent. Eventually, important items left undone become emergencies themselves. Moral of the story: No matter how little time you have, always take some time to plan, to prioritize. Breath. Relax. Make haste slowly. Tend to the important emergencies, and the important non-emergencies, and try to ignore the unimportant emergencies, if you can. And take the time to know the difference.
- lukifer 13y ago
  Good advice. I've converged on a catchphrase/mantra in recent years: "Slow down to hurry up." Attempting to rush urgent features or fixes can paradoxically make them take longer to finish.
  - gaius 13y ago
    We have a saying in diving, "slow is smooth and smooth is fast".
    - PeterWhittaker 13y ago
      Not to mention "breathe, remember to breathe". Do you remember the first time that, while properly weighted, you descended effortlessly, just by really exhaling, for real? I know where I was the first time. It's amazing when it works, and you realize just how much air you had been holding in your lungs, without being aware of it. My air consumption dropped after that.
  - erbo 13y ago
    That's a truism of orbital mechanics: to speed up, you slow down, thereby dropping into a lower orbit where you go faster. This was used as an effective metaphor (along your lines) by John Brunner in The Shockwave Rider.
  - dcminter 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente
- bitwize 13y ago
  tl;dr: When you have plenty of something, you can rationally plan how best to use it, perhaps entertaining and evaluating multiple scenarios - but when something is scarce, you tend to conserve it, doling it out piecemeal for only the most urgent needs. In RPGs this is called Too Awesome To Use. When there are only four Hero Drinks in the game -- and you don't have anything like the W Item hack -- they sit there in the bottom of your pack to be used -- maybe -- on the Final Boss or even That One Boss. FFXII did this with ethers.
  - vanderZwan 13y ago
    Which just goes to show that the underlying mechanism is a very general one. I wonder how many other (to quote Daniel Ariely) "predictably irrational" human behaviours can be explained using this model, and if this insight will lead to better interventions elsewhere.
- sneak 13y ago
  Breath is a noun, breathe is a verb.
etanazir 13y ago
So we don't have time to write tests for the code?
- ommunist 13y ago
  Nope, neither we have time to test html email against variety of clients.
ommunist 13y ago
Very good example. It shows that our most precious resource is uninterrupted attention. And it is scarce. Because of your uncontrolled Internet habits on the first place. A good reading on that is "The Shallows" by Nick Carr.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Scarcity (of time and money) seems to generate a bipolar pattern between extreme (and unwise) stinginess and escapist binges when they just want to take a break from being poor. I've also noticed that people who get their cash in volatile distributions (e.g. independent graphic designers) tend to have bad financial sense, because they go from perceived but false richness (someone just gave me $60,000!) to drought. I'd assume there's a similar phenomenon in VC.
coldcode 13y ago
I think I'll read it tomorrow when I have more time.
tom6a 13y ago
PG would say the type of procrastination in the NPR article (missing the vehicle registration date) is "good" procrastination. http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html
goggles99 13y ago
>BYLINE: Each September the state of Massachusetts asks one thing from "Scarcity" author and Harvard economist, Sendhil Mullainathan, to renew his car inspection sticker and each year this recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award does the same thing. He's really busy, so on each day leading up to the expiration of the sticker, he tells himself he'll attend to it the next day. This guy has a serious logic flaw in his way of thinking. It scares me that there are people out there teaching economics in supposedly prominent schools. It was not scarcity that affected his thinking. It was his irresponsibility. By scarcity of time, the author is including things like watching television, writing a book on the side, ETC. This is a simple case of procrastination. These are optional things in the same way that someone with a meager income can live in relative comfort in America (never go hungry, wet or cold), Then they decide to buy a fancy new car (though nothing was wrong with their older model Honda). Now they have created a scarcity because they suddenly cannot afford to pay their rent. It was not the scarcity that affected their thinking and behavior, it was self indulgence and irresponsibility that caused the scarcity if the first place.
altoz 13y ago
tl;dr urgency and prudence don't go together.
jeffdavis 13y ago
"The poor farmer in India might need repeated reminders about weeding. One might not be enough. The minimum wage worker in America might need a couple of extra days to pay her bills instead of being slapped with a fine one day after payment is due." That is the solution? I am not impressed. They are also fairly easy to test scientifically, and considering he's a researcher, then why didn't he do so?

72 points by marojejian 13y ago

tl;dr: When you have plenty of something, you can rationally plan how best to use it, perhaps entertaining and evaluating multiple scenarios - but when something is scarce, you tend to conserve it, doling it out piecemeal for only the most urgent needs. If that thing is time, you spend it - you spend your time - on the urgent only, foregoing the important but not urgent. Eventually, important items left undone become emergencies themselves. Moral of the story: No matter how little time you have, always take some time to plan, to prioritize. Breath. Relax. Make haste slowly. Tend to the important emergencies, and the important non-emergencies, and try to ignore the unimportant emergencies, if you can. And take the time to know the difference.

lukifer 13y ago
Good advice. I've converged on a catchphrase/mantra in recent years: "Slow down to hurry up." Attempting to rush urgent features or fixes can paradoxically make them take longer to finish.
- gaius 13y ago
  We have a saying in diving, "slow is smooth and smooth is fast".
  - PeterWhittaker 13y ago
    Not to mention "breathe, remember to breathe". Do you remember the first time that, while properly weighted, you descended effortlessly, just by really exhaling, for real? I know where I was the first time. It's amazing when it works, and you realize just how much air you had been holding in your lungs, without being aware of it. My air consumption dropped after that.
- erbo 13y ago
  That's a truism of orbital mechanics: to speed up, you slow down, thereby dropping into a lower orbit where you go faster. This was used as an effective metaphor (along your lines) by John Brunner in The Shockwave Rider.
- dcminter 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente
bitwize 13y ago
tl;dr: When you have plenty of something, you can rationally plan how best to use it, perhaps entertaining and evaluating multiple scenarios - but when something is scarce, you tend to conserve it, doling it out piecemeal for only the most urgent needs. In RPGs this is called Too Awesome To Use. When there are only four Hero Drinks in the game -- and you don't have anything like the W Item hack -- they sit there in the bottom of your pack to be used -- maybe -- on the Final Boss or even That One Boss. FFXII did this with ethers.
- vanderZwan 13y ago
  Which just goes to show that the underlying mechanism is a very general one. I wonder how many other (to quote Daniel Ariely) "predictably irrational" human behaviours can be explained using this model, and if this insight will lead to better interventions elsewhere.
sneak 13y ago
Breath is a noun, breathe is a verb.

etanazir 13y ago

So we don't have time to write tests for the code?

ommunist 13y ago
Nope, neither we have time to test html email against variety of clients.

ommunist 13y ago

Very good example. It shows that our most precious resource is uninterrupted attention. And it is scarce. Because of your uncontrolled Internet habits on the first place. A good reading on that is "The Shallows" by Nick Carr.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Scarcity (of time and money) seems to generate a bipolar pattern between extreme (and unwise) stinginess and escapist binges when they just want to take a break from being poor. I've also noticed that people who get their cash in volatile distributions (e.g. independent graphic designers) tend to have bad financial sense, because they go from perceived but false richness (someone just gave me $60,000!) to drought. I'd assume there's a similar phenomenon in VC.

coldcode 13y ago

I think I'll read it tomorrow when I have more time.

tom6a 13y ago

PG would say the type of procrastination in the NPR article (missing the vehicle registration date) is "good" procrastination. http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

goggles99 13y ago

>BYLINE: Each September the state of Massachusetts asks one thing from "Scarcity" author and Harvard economist, Sendhil Mullainathan, to renew his car inspection sticker and each year this recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award does the same thing. He's really busy, so on each day leading up to the expiration of the sticker, he tells himself he'll attend to it the next day. This guy has a serious logic flaw in his way of thinking. It scares me that there are people out there teaching economics in supposedly prominent schools. It was not scarcity that affected his thinking. It was his irresponsibility. By scarcity of time, the author is including things like watching television, writing a book on the side, ETC. This is a simple case of procrastination. These are optional things in the same way that someone with a meager income can live in relative comfort in America (never go hungry, wet or cold), Then they decide to buy a fancy new car (though nothing was wrong with their older model Honda). Now they have created a scarcity because they suddenly cannot afford to pay their rent. It was not the scarcity that affected their thinking and behavior, it was self indulgence and irresponsibility that caused the scarcity if the first place.

altoz 13y ago

tl;dr urgency and prudence don't go together.

jeffdavis 13y ago

"The poor farmer in India might need repeated reminders about weeding. One might not be enough. The minimum wage worker in America might need a couple of extra days to pay her bills instead of being slapped with a fine one day after payment is due." That is the solution? I am not impressed. They are also fairly easy to test scientifically, and considering he's a researcher, then why didn't he do so?