The author finds that long-term poverty will make people enter a scarcity mentality, and this "scarcity mentality" is the fundamental reason why the poor are poorer, so it is very necessary for the poor to understand this scarcity mentality if they want to get rid of poverty. Then what is "scarcity"? What are its hazards? Let's talk about this book from three aspects: the composition of scarcity, the harm of scarcity and the methods to prevent scarcity.
first part
Let's look at the first point, what is scarcity.
Scarcity here is not an objective material scarcity, but a scarce mentality. It's as if a deadline is approaching, and a person will have a sense of urgency. For example, you have to finish the work and hand in the task every Friday, and you haven't finished it by Thursday. At this time you will feel anxious and start to concentrate on your work. Nothing will bother you, because finishing the task is the most urgent thing at this time, and other things can be postponed compared with this. You will enter a state of concentration and focus only on the work at hand. At this time, you will enter a state of scarcity.
After listening to this example, you may feel lacking, which is still a good thing, because it allows us to complete the task more effectively. In fact, it does have this benefit. Can bring a focus bonus. Focusing on bonuses is to concentrate on a job with high attention in a short time, so as to produce high output. With the help of focus bonus, we will make the best use of the remaining resources. For example, when the deadline for your work is approaching, you will feel a constant sense of urgency and usually finish the work at the last minute. Another example is a box of chocolates, you will always have the last few pieces left to feel the best; For example, in the last few days of the holiday, we will especially cherish our time. This is the focus bonus brought by scarcity.
However, although such concentration can bring some benefits in the short term, it is not a good thing if it stays in this scarce mentality for a long time. Will drag a person to poverty and enter a vicious circle of scarcity. To understand this cycle, we must first look at the consequences of scarcity.
the second part
Scarcity usually produces four effects: the first is voyeurism, just like when you look through a pipe, you can only see what is inside the pipe, but not what is outside it. We usually use this word to describe a person who is short-sighted and narrow-minded Once we are faced with scarcity, we tend to focus on what needs our attention most. Therefore, we tend to ignore the really important things, the most important things that can get us out of poverty.
The author gives an example, for example, American firefighters often enter a state of emergency. In case of fire, firemen will be asked to put on pants, coats and shoes within 60 seconds, grab what they should take, jump on the fire truck and set off quickly. At this time, you may think that most firefighters should have died at the scene of the fire. In fact, according to statistics, nearly 80% of the firefighters who died in the accident died on the way to fighting the fire, and some of them were traffic accidents when fire engines collided with other cars. But the most important reason, guess what? They were thrown out of the car and killed when the car turned sharply. They were not wearing seat belts. Doesn't that sound incredible? Firefighters are usually strictly trained. How can we ignore this simple seat belt? This can be explained by the peep effect. You see, when they receive a fire alarm, they will enter a state of scarce time. They should make preparations in a short time, and make some fire-fighting strategies on the road, study the structure of the fire site, calculate the number of faucets and estimate the size of the fire. All these will lead to some important but ordinary things being ignored.
The voyeurism will change the way we make decisions. For example, you may be used to running in the morning, but there are too many tasks these days, and you may feel that running is not so important. It is most important to finish the work quickly, and it doesn't matter if you run for a day or two. But in the long run, investing in your body is the most important thing, which you must know, but in a state of scarcity, you will make a decision that will damage your long-term value.
For example, we can do a thinking experiment. Now you can think about it. Besides milk, what else is white? You can use your head. How many kinds can you think of? There may not be more than ten kinds, but there is a way to reduce the difficulty of this experiment, that is, I will ask you directly what is white without the introduction I mentioned earlier. You may think that moonlight is white, waves are white, ivory is white, and so on. But if I ask what is white besides milk, the qualifier "milk" will inhibit your idea, you can try it. This is often called inhibition in psychology. Excessive focus on one thing will inhibit the sense of competition, just like you are angry with a person. This inhibition will make you ignore all his usual benefits, and the more you think about it, the angrier you get. So scarcity will lead to peep effect, so that we only pay attention to urgent matters in a narrow range. No matter how important things are, you won't pay attention to them, and you will be bound, so that you will always fall into an emergency.
Second, scarcity can also lead to borrowing, that is, a person habitually overdraws future resources. For example, credit cards are particularly popular now. If you have used a credit card, you should know that this credit card is a bottomless pit. After an overdraft, you will basically have no cash in your hand. I just get the money every month, and I have to pay it back before my hand is hot, and I will always be in a state of scarcity. If there is an emergency at this time, such as your good friend getting married and you want to give a big red envelope, then this month will be uncomfortable. The overdue interest on credit cards is usually high.
Another example is usury. I find that the poorer people are, the more they like to borrow usury. As long as they borrow it, this person is basically not far from bankruptcy. You may ask, don't these people know that such a high interest rate will ruin their finances? Of course these people know, but compared with the emergencies they are facing now, those are things in the future, and they will think that there may be some changes in the future. I usually borrow it with this mentality.
Borrowing here is not just money. Busy people often borrow it in time. For example, if this week's work is not finished, it will be put off until next week, and next week's work will be put off until next week, so it will be scarce for a long time. This state will make a person completely ignore other ways to save himself, such as time management, such as energy management, such as improving work efficiency. In the long run, borrowing will make a person scarcer.
Third, scarcity will lead to no leisure, that is, no extra time and space. For example, you are going on a trip, and now you have a box in your hand. You must pack all the things you need, such as cosmetics, some clothes, digital equipment and some gadgets. After packing, you find that there is still some space, and then you can stuff some less needed things, some magazines and snacks. The whole process was very happy and fast. But if your suitcase is very small, it won't be as comfortable as mentioned before, so you start weighing and comparing, thinking, "shall I take this or not?" There are few things that can't be stuffed in anyway. To make room, you can take everything out and put it back.
Try again and again until the box is full. At this time, you may say, this seems to save more space, right? But do you know how much energy and time this process takes? Why do poor people feel that life is particularly tiring is because there are too many thinking processes of this trade-off. If you spend a dollar, you have to struggle and compare. If you spend some time, you should consider whether it will be more effective to spend it elsewhere. This kind of thinking seems to be very efficient, in fact, it will make a person have a lot of mental burden, consume attention and energy, and further produce a peep effect, so that you can only concentrate on what is in front of you and ignore what is really important.
Therefore, leisure has become particularly important here. Leisure is the time and space that we have left and have not used. This is a story told by the author in the book. One hospital is particularly worried about the shortage of operating rooms every year. This hospital has 32 operating rooms, but it receives more than 30,000 operations every year. The operating room is always full, and some unexpected operations are often needed. Doctors are most afraid of this, because in case of emergency, the scheduled date will have to be pushed back. The doctors in the hospital are doing surgery every day, but they are actually filling the hole left last week, that is, the unfinished surgery. In this case, the whole hospital has been in a state of emergency, and everyone is very anxious. You can imagine that doctors work overtime for a long time and are human. They can't rest. At first, their bodies couldn't bear it. Work efficiency is declining and the error rate is soaring. The hospital had to pay high medical expenses for their surgical mistakes. So how to solve this problem? You might say, wouldn't it be solved by building more operating rooms? But in theory, you can't get enough operating rooms, because the demand for surgery is always much more than the resources of the operating room.
What shall we do? They hired a consultant to give them advice. After understanding the situation, the consultant said, "This is very simple. Don't you have 32 operating rooms? Leave an empty room to deal with sudden surgery. " Hearing this, the hospital leaders quit. I don't have enough space, so you still have to take out an empty room. Isn't this a waste? The consultant didn't say much, but said, "You try first." . Results The hospital's first attempt was really effective, and the rate of accepting surgery increased by 5%. After 3 pm, the number of operations dropped by nearly half, and the rate of surgical errors also dropped significantly, which was immediate.
Why is this? This is actually the advantage of leisure. Because the consultant found that there are two kinds of operations in the hospital: one is planned and the other is unplanned. Now the planned operation has occupied all the operating rooms, and once there is an unplanned operation, it will affect the whole process of operation arrangement. But the hospital never thought about changing the cost of this schedule. At what cost? First of all, you have to pay economic costs, that is, doctors' overtime pay and medical costs. For example, if a doctor's surgical mistake leads to a medical accident, the hospital will compensate. And the cost of efficiency. Doctors work overtime every day, and each operation takes longer and is less efficient than the last one. This expense is a huge sum. After reading these costs, you will find that the scarcity of operating rooms is not the scarcity of space, but the inability to use the existing operating rooms to deal with emergencies. The solution is to leave a room, so that sudden surgery will not affect the daily schedule. These expenses mentioned above can be saved in the whole province, and hospitals will jump out of this scarce state and work in an orderly way. In fact, this state is particularly similar to the poor who are heavily in debt. The poor people's ability to resist risks is particularly low, and they will enter a state of scarcity at the slightest sign of trouble. For example, every month's money is the debt owed last month, so the cost is actually extremely high.
In fact, the normal operation of many systems depends on a certain amount of idle time. I don't know if you have seen the previous tape, but there will be a blank part on the tape, which will ensure that the whole tape will not be torn off and the life of the tape will be longer. For example, the washing machine, if you are too full, you can't turn it around. You must leave some space before it turns. Another example is cars on the road. If the road occupancy rate exceeds 85%, the probability of traffic jam is 100%. As long as the car reaches a certain level, it will be blocked, because as long as one driver steps on the brakes, the drivers behind will stop. Therefore, it is very important for any system to leave some spare time. It is not a waste of resources, but a guarantee to make the system run more efficiently.
From this perspective, the essence of scarcity is that there is no leisure. Leisure may make a person less efficient, but the positive benefits it brings are very high. It is a luxury psychological enjoyment. A luxury that allows us to face the trivial things of life without weighing, and it doesn't matter if we make mistakes. This kind of enjoyment is very important to one's happiness. As Thoreau said, a person's wealth is directly proportional to the number of things he can give up.
Fourth, and most importantly, scarcity will lead to insufficient bandwidth. What is bandwidth? Bandwidth is the floorboard of our computing ability, attention ability, decision-making ability, execution ability and ability to resist temptation. From dealing with everyday things to thinking, we all need bandwidth. You can think of bandwidth as a highway. This road has a certain width and the number of vehicles driving at the same time is limited. Generally, we can queue seven cars, which means we can only focus on seven things at most. If there are more than seven cars, it will cause bandwidth burden, and this road will also be congested, and the speed of all cars will drop, and in serious cases, there will be an accident.
You may ask, why are there seven things? Eight things, okay? Actually, it's okay. Just a rough calculation. Think about it. Do we often open no more than seven mobile apps on our mobile phones? Don't you have more than seven contacts? You go to no more than seven places often? "Seven" is usually the critical point that human cognition can bear. Beyond this number, a person will have a serious bandwidth burden, and at this time he will feel that his energy is not enough. As we all know, the brain can only deal with one thing at a time. When there are seven things to deal with, it will feel that energy is not enough and it will feel tired and weak. If we enter a state of scarcity, the bandwidth will be further narrowed, that is, the expressway will be further narrowed. As we said before, when we are in a state of concentration, we will only pay attention to one urgent thing. Poor people are poor largely because of insufficient bandwidth, and they usually ignore something very important.
Let me give you another example. For example, 285 million people in the world suffer from diabetes. Now diabetes can be basically cured. Although it can't be completely eradicated, it won't kill people. Why do so many people die of diabetes every year? The reason is simple, that is, these people didn't take the medicine on time. Including a series of other diseases, many times because patients did not take medicine on time, which led to serious consequences. The study also found that poor people are the majority, and poorer people do not take medicine on time. For another example, farmers all know that weeding regularly can greatly increase the yield of crops, but farmers in poor areas all over the world often just don't weed. Do you think these people are lazy? No, they should sow, water and fertilize the flowers in advance. These people are often busy all day, but they don't want to do weeding, which can greatly increase their income.
The experimental results show that the poor still have many shortcomings. For example, the poor in the United States are generally fat, and they don't give their children much education, insurance, vaccination, regular savings and investment. Don't these people know it's important to do these things? If you ask them, they will think these things are very important, but they are not urgent. They only focus on urgent matters. In fact, these problems can be explained by bandwidth. The bandwidth of the poor is narrower, and what he encounters every day will take up most of the bandwidth, so he has no energy to pay attention to long-term important things. Every day, I am overwhelmed by my livelihood. How can he save money here? Do you want a special price on that thing? What if the rent is about to expire and there is no money? What if the task expires tomorrow and time is too late? In short, their hearts are so full that they have no extra time to think about how to get rid of this dilemma.
Insufficient bandwidth will also lead to their cognitive decline. For example, the author did an experiment. A group of experimenters took part in the first test and asked them to do the test questions without thinking about anything. The second test induces them to think about their financial situation in advance and pay attention to what they lack. The results of these two groups of tests show that the score of the first group is much higher, which is basically twice that of the second group, indicating that insufficient bandwidth will affect the intelligence level.
What we call bandwidth supports almost all our behaviors. We use it to judge other people's facial expressions and control emotions and impulses. We use it to read and think. If the bandwidth is insufficient, it will enter a state of freedom and dullness. You can think about it. If you are talking to someone who is chatting with you while surfing the Internet, you don't know what he is busy with. He is always absent-minded when talking to you. How do you feel? Do you wonder if this person is cold, abnormal and disrespectful? He must have left such an impression on you. The author found this phenomenon when talking with many poor people. These people can't sleep well at night and their self-control ability is even worse. When they encounter problems, they prefer smoking and drinking, which makes them get into more trouble. So the poor don't take medicine, weed, buy insurance, save or invest, because they don't pay attention to these things. What the poor really lack is not time or money, but bandwidth. They need to pay attention to real long-term planning, learn new skills and manage their finances regularly, so as to finally jump out of the cycle of scarcity.
From the above four points, we can clearly see how the scarcity trap is formed. For the poor, because there is no money, all attention should be focused on money. Everything in the brain is related to money. All kinds of things about money make this bandwidth insufficient, modesty becomes impulsive and out of control, leading to cognitive decline, making more wrong decisions, such as borrowing, such as overdraft, and finally entering an infinite cycle of debt repayment. For people with time difference, there are too many things to pay attention to because they have no time, which will lead to insufficient bandwidth. What is reflected in the brain is those unfinished and urgent things, which will always be in a hurry and make it easier to make wrong decisions. Finally, I feel that time is even scarcer, which is a vicious circle.
the third part
Simply put, if you care too much about something, you will often limit your vision and cause a vicious circle, but it will be more difficult to get it. This is what we often say. The more simple you think, the more you tend to limit your vision and cause a vicious circle, but it is more difficult to get it. This is what we often say, the more you want to make money, the less you can make money. On the contrary, it will be easier to make money if you focus on the needs of others and try your best to serve others. For scarcity, just like a person will laugh when he is happy and lose his temper when he is angry, once he enters the state of scarcity, it will inevitably bring a series of vicious cycles. How to avoid entering such a state? The author gave us three tips: saving bandwidth, setting aside leisure time and setting reminders.
Let's look at the first one first. How to save bandwidth? Is to reduce the trivial things that need to be decided in daily life. Just like Zuckerberg, wearing the same clothes every day reduces the trouble of choosing. The less balanced thinking in life, the better. At least, don't haggle over a few dollars, and don't waste a lot of time to save a few dollars. Don't always think about what you lack, but focus on what is really worth it and what can be accumulated for a long time. Effective use of bandwidth is an important way to get rid of scarcity.
Second, there is nothing to do. If there is no money, leave a small part for investment. You can save regularly or invest in learning to improve your skills and cognitive level. Try not to overdraw, borrow money, or borrow usury unless absolutely necessary. No matter how tight the time is, don't overdraw the future time. The work of the day will be completed on the same day. Always remember that there are things to do in the future. Also, don't work too hard. Taking a break on time is a necessary thing to keep yourself efficient. It's not a waste of time to let yourself be idle for a while. Will broaden a person's bandwidth, just like the example of the hospital we talked about just now. The cost of sacrificing rest time is extremely high.
Third, set reminders. Poor people usually have too much bandwidth burden and often ignore important but not urgent things, so it is very important to set reminders to bring important things back to their horizons and attract attention. For example, if you want to exercise, you should set a regular reminder. If you want to save money, then try to make some money in the salary card automatically set aside for saving, turn neglect into acquiescence, and let life develop in a good direction automatically and slowly.
To sum up, the book Scarcity gives a concept. Scarcity is a state of mind. Once we have this mentality, we will fall into the trap of scarcity, which will have a peeping effect, that is, we will only pay attention to urgent things and ignore important things. It will make us have no leisure, make our work and life inflexible, and make it easy for us to borrow and overdraw future resources. It will also reduce our bandwidth, increase the probability of wrong decision, and finally let us enter a vicious circle of scarcity. There are three ways to jump out of this strange circle: one is to save bandwidth and reduce trade-off thinking; The second is to be idle and make yourself more efficient; The third is to set reminders to make important things appear in the field of vision in time.
Scarcity is a state of mind in the final analysis. The fundamental difference between the poor and the rich is the difference in the use of resources and their own abilities. Sometimes a little change in mentality and a little adjustment in the pace of life will trigger a domino-like chain effect and turn a person's life from a vicious circle to a virtuous circle. The key is whether a person wants to get rid of the thinking of the poor. Scarcity of resources is not terrible at all. There is no shortage of resources in this world. The most terrible thing is the scarcity mentality.