When I\u2019m running close to a bunch of deadlines I trip over chair legs and run into cupboards. I miss appointments and credit card payments. I don\u2019t hear people. It\u2019s like I\u2019ve suddenly become stupid.
\nI\u2019ve been mentally captured by the condition of scarcity. In my case, it\u2019s scarcity of time. The same principle applies to other kinds of scarcity: scarcity of money, scarcity of food, scarcity of health, scarcity of safety.
\nIn their book Scarcity, The True Cost of Not Having Enough<\/a>, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, eloquently set out a psychology of scarcity. It\u2019s got a host of implications for anyone designing change efforts.
\nTheir argument is simple:
\n\u201cScarcity captures our attention, and this provides a narrow benefit: we do a better job of managing pressing needs. But more broadly, it costs us: we neglect other concerns, and we become less effective in the rest of life.\u201d
\nScarcity and urgency do have positive effects: they \u201cyield a focus dividend. In a box of expensive chocolates, we savor (and hoard) the last ones. We run around on the last days of a vacation to see every sight. We write more carefully, and to our surprise often better, when we have a tight word limit.\u201d
\nScarcity also has strong negative effects: \u201cThe power of focus is also the power to shut things out. Instead of saying that scarcity \u201cfocuses,\u201d we could just as easily say that scarcity causes us to tunnel: to focus single-mindedly on managing the scarcity at hand.\u201d
\nThey offer two important ideas: BANDWIDTH and TUNNELING.
\nOur mental BANDWIDTH\u00a0is reduced by scarcity: we have less willpower, less attention and less active intelligence. \u201cOne study revealed that simply raising monetary concerns for the poor erodes cognitive performance even more than being seriously sleep deprived: 13-14 IQ points!\u201d
\nAnd we tend to focus exclusively on what\u2019s IN THE TUNNEL of our immediate needs. Things outside the tunnel become harder to see clearly, easier to undervalue, and more likely to get left out.
\n\u201cBecause we are preoccupied by scarcity, because our minds constantly return to it, we have less mind to give to the rest of life. \u2026we find that scarcity\u2026makes us less insightful, less forward-thinking, less controlled. And the effects are large. It is not that the poor have less bandwidth as individuals. Rather, it is that the experience of poverty reduces anyone\u2019s bandwidth. When we think of the poor, we naturally think of a shortage of money. When we think of the busy, or the lonely, we think of a shortage of time, or of friends. But our results suggest that scarcity of all varieties also leads to a shortage of bandwidth<\/em>.
\nOne idea they propose is a radical reconceptualization of poverty: \u201cWe understand that rent and food and school fees all form part of a household\u2019s budget. Now, rather than looking at education, health, finance, and child care as separate problems, we must recognize that they all form part of a person\u2019s bandwidth capacity. And just as a financial tax can wreak havoc in one\u2019s budget, so can a bandwidth tax create failure in any of several domains to which a person must attend. Conversely, fixing some of those bottlenecks can have far-reaching consequences. Child care provides more than just child care, and the right financial product does much more than just create savings for a rainy day. Each of these can liberate bandwidth, boost IQ, firm up self- control, enhance clarity of thinking, and even improve sleep. Far-fetched? The data suggest not.\u201d
\nThey compare the highly prescriptive nature of modern welfare systems\u00a0(like Centrelink) to \u201cgoing to a juggler who is in need of help and tossing one more ball in the air for him to juggle.\u201d Instead, welfare programs should be highly fault tolerant to fit the narrow, disrupted attentions of those under financial stress. \u201cStrict deadlines and rules set stressed people up for failure. The low tolerance for mistakes practically guarantees missed appointments, missed classes…\u201d.\u00a0Instead of blaming welfare recipients, they suggest redesigning the system to match people\u2019s bandwidth.
\n\u201cThe deeper lesson is the need to focus on managing and cultivating bandwidth, despite pressures to the contrary brought on by scarcity. Increasing work hours, working people harder, forgoing vacations, and so on are all tunneling responses, like borrowing at high interest. They ignore the long-term consequences. Psychiatrists report an increasing number of patients who show symptoms of acute stress \u201cstretched to their limits and beyond with no margin, no room in their lives for rest, relaxation, and reflection.\u201d There is nothing magical about working forty or fifty or sixty hours a week. But there is something important about letting your mind out for a jog \u2013 to maximize effective bandwidth rather than hours worked.\u201d
\nFor designers of change programs there is a\u00a0big lesson: if scarcity is a 360 degree drain on people\u2019s ability to make changes in their lives then tackling their sense of scarcity may be a critical preliminary to the successful spread of new behaviours.
\nHere are some insights for change makers:
\n– it\u2019s possible to use scarcity or urgency to activate people. Programs with \u201climited numbers\u201d or early closing dates grab people\u2019s attention and willpower;
\n– try to target people\u2019s self-perceived urgent problems, that way we are \u201cin the tunnel\u201d of their attention spans and motivation;
\n– buffers of free un-assigned time,\u00a0or\u00a0un-tied money and resources, produce tremendous pay-offs in bandwidth by liberating people\u2019s attention, intelligence and motivation;
\n– the rush of daily life may make it practically impossible for people to think or plan, so aim to create special events and locations where people\u00a0are free from distraction;
\n– make things super-simple to understand and do (the authors point to a study that randomly assigned participants to diets that differed in their rule complexity and concluded, \u201cPerceived rule complexity was the strongest factor associated with increased risk of quitting the cognitively demanding weight management program.\u201d);
\n– recognise that most people will never have the bandwidth to make low priority changes in their lives. Small business people are a classic example of this problem. They need someone to do it for them! So create a service;
\n– and for our own creativity, recognise that productivity, accountability and deadlines are corrosive\u00a0forces. To be imaginative and innovative in our work, make times and places that are free from their malign\u00a0influence.
\nMore\u2026 here\u2019s The Guardian review <\/a>of the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I\u2019m running close to a bunch of deadlines I trip over chair legs and run into cupboards. I miss appointments and credit card payments. I don\u2019t hear people. It\u2019s like I\u2019ve suddenly become stupid. I\u2019ve been mentally captured by the condition of scarcity. In my case, it\u2019s scarcity of time. The same principle applies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innovation-2","category-motivation-2","category-strategy-2","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pac6ss-dZ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}