"How 996 Changed Our Lives"

This article is Lu Canwei's 74th original piece.

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I wonder if everyone has been following the Two Sessions. Today, CPPCC member Li Guohua suggested regulating the 996 work system. Here are his original words:

Now let's take a look at the employment situation this year. This is part of what Premier Li Keqiang said in response to reporters today:

As regulation becomes increasingly refined, I believe the situation of 996icu will gradually decrease. However, the employment pressure in the country remains significant, and I believe the 996 situation will still exist for a long time.

So what impact does 996 have on us? Some say long working hours affect health, others say there is no personal time, and some say it leads to lower income. Regardless of the viewpoint, it essentially boils down to a problem of scarcity—scarcity of time, money, and health makes our lives very difficult. Economists Mullainathan and psychologist Shafir define scarcity from a different perspective in their book "Scarcity," stating that scarcity is a psychological issue rather than a resource issue.

I believe everyone has encountered situations where there are too many things to do but not enough time. Many times, we find ourselves missing deadlines, constantly postponing tasks, just like the alarm clock in the morning that keeps getting snoozed. Our inbox is filled with emails waiting to be addressed, we haven't called our family in a long time, and procrastination leads us to the brink of losing control. Finally, one day we wake up and decide to change this situation. We then create a plan and tell ourselves not to add new tasks until the current plan is manageable.

This solution seems reasonable, but it is indeed a form of avoidance because it lacks feasibility. Once the initial enthusiasm fades, things may spiral further out of control. Another issue is debt, where we always have bills that seem never-ending.

Although these two issues appear to be different—one is time management and the other is financial management—they share a commonality: scarcity.

Scarcity affects our brains and intrudes upon our thoughts, causing our minds to automatically focus on unmet needs. Single individuals often think about having a boyfriend/girlfriend, those short on money hope to get rich overnight (yes, that's me), and insomniacs wish they could fall asleep quickly, and so on.

To illustrate this, scientists conducted an experiment where they gathered a group of people, with one group (Group A) being hungry and the other group (Group B) well-fed. They then had them participate in an experiment where words flashed on a screen, and they had to identify the words. Logically, one would think that Group A, being extremely hungry, would struggle to concentrate and perform poorly. However, the results showed that they performed just as well as those who were well-fed. The exception was when the words were related to food; they could identify those much faster.

Scarcity operates at a subconscious level. Whether we like it or not, it shifts our attention to what we lack.

This explains one of the three great illusions of humanity: "He/She likes me." When we are single, we tend to remember the details of the other person's actions more easily and become very sensitive to their every move. When the other person simply thanks you for buying them a coffee, you might already be imagining a life together with children.

The more we lack something, the more we tend to vocalize it. Just like in television shows, the ultimate villain is often the character who has been shouting about justice and love for the world.

This situation leads to long-term impacts on our decision-making and behavior. When we have several tasks at hand, we might be working on one but are mentally distracted, thinking about another unfinished task. It's like how I am writing this article while also thinking about the anime I haven't watched yet that updated last night. Our brains function like computers; if we are not careful, we can overload our bandwidth and experience various crashes.

Bandwidth refers to our mental capacity, which includes cognitive ability and executive control. Scarcity reduces the capacity of all these bandwidths, leading to a lack of insight and foresight, and weakening our executive control.

It sounds like scarcity has no benefits at all. Should we then waste food and not diet, be carefree like a "sea king" instead of making good choices, or allow ourselves to be less busy and waste time?

I wonder if anyone has had the experience of a meeting lasting over an hour, where everyone shares a lot of seemingly meaningful comments that have nothing to do with the meeting's topic, until someone knocks on the door to say the meeting time is up and asks how much longer you need. You tell them about 10 more minutes, and suddenly everyone becomes very efficient, wrapping up the meeting within that time.

When faced with scarcity, our attention focuses on how to utilize our resources most effectively. Once we run out of time, we begin to concentrate.

This is also why I tend to write at this time—because there is a deadline.

Conclusion

I came across this book in an article by another public account blogger, and I feel it is a book worth reading slowly and repeatedly. This book helps us understand short-termism and long-termism more rationally, aiding us in decision-making and understanding the underlying logic behind our choices. For example, if there is an item priced at 1000 yuan in one store and the same item is 500 yuan in another store 20 minutes away, would you choose to spend 20 minutes to buy it from the other store? What if the item costs 10,000 yuan? Would your answer still be the same?

When answering the first question, if you only have 1000 yuan, what would your answer be? If you have 10,000 yuan, would your answer remain unchanged?

The quality of output determines the quality of input. I will write a few more articles to finish discussing this book.

P.S.: Feel free to reply with 【Anime】 to find out which series has kept me from writing this article properly (manual dog head).

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