"How to Avoid Falling into the Scarcity Trap"

This article is Lu Canwei's 79th original piece.

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In the previous articles, we discussed the focus dividend, the narrow mindset, bandwidth burden, and leisure. We talked about a bunch of phenomena and problems, and it seems that the scarce solution is leisure. This is akin to saying that the solution to poverty is having money. So why do many lottery winners end up poor again, sometimes even poorer than before?

One concept to mention here is the scarcity trap, which is a situation where someone's behavior contributes to the formation of scarcity.

I believe everyone has encountered a situation at work where a person is always busy. They are not doing more than others, nor are they inefficient, but they are constantly busy and often delayed. They might be lagging behind in a certain aspect, leading to a continuous state of catching up, and ultimately, their work is always about repaying previous tasks.

The root of the scarcity trap lies in the misallocation of resources, resulting in actual shortages. The scarcity trap means always being one step behind, perpetually repaying last month's expenses. This management style effectively amplifies scarcity, much like compound interest, making the initial scarcity even worse.

So it sounds like if we just repay historical debts all at once, we can reach the peak of life, right?

Scientists provided a one-time financial supplement, and in the initial months, the subjects did not fall back into the debt trap. This seemed to align with the initial hypothesis, but it was not the whole story. In the following months, the subjects gradually returned to their original state.

This became quite awkward...

After in-depth research, scientists found that the reason was the lack of leisure. If the subjects were in debt, when faced with local customs, they might be very frugal when buying gifts, disregarding face value. They might even skip meals. Once scientists helped them pay off their debts, they would naturally flaunt their wealth, insisting that their gifts must match their status.

When the circumstances change, the narrow mindset they are trapped in faces different issues. When in debt, the subjects have to consider upcoming bills rather than current gifts. Once they are debt-free, they focus on the current gifts and their own face value, which becomes their immediate need.

When leisure is insufficient, the first thing sacrificed is savings. When savings are inadequate to deal with emergencies, borrowing becomes the only option.

So it seems that as long as there is enough leeway to handle these emergencies, everything will be fine. During financially comfortable times, we should save more money. In times of resource abundance, we tend to waste money and time, resulting in cutting back on food and living on instant noodles by the end of the month.

It seems that if we are frugal during times of resource abundance, we can become winners in life. However, that is not the case. Otherwise, why would the term procrastination exist? Thus, both the rich and the poor experience procrastination, but the rich have more leisure than the poor, so the impact is not as severe.

The previous articles discussed many reasons, so how should we solve the problem of scarcity? You even dismissed my overnight wealth solution...

Since we know that once scarcity occurs, it puts people into a narrow mindset, we need to push information from outside the tube into the tube.

The most common practice is our magical alarm clock. I believe everyone has experienced difficulty getting up in the morning because we fall into the mindset of how great sleeping is, making getting up not in our line of sight.

So what do people do? For example, if I want to get up at 8 o'clock, I set an alarm every 5 minutes starting from 7:30 until I get up. This practice continuously pushes the act of getting up into our line of sight.

Another approach is to set up early warnings, which is to make a checklist, commonly known as a to-do list, listing things we foresee happening in the future and completing them in advance.

Additionally, turning one-time income into monthly income can help. For instance, if you are a small business owner, mixing store income with personal expenses can lead to unclear accounting. So, deduct a portion from the revenue each month as your salary, allowing you to spend your own salary money.

Even after reading some studies on poverty mentioned in "The Nature of Poverty" and "Scarcity," this area should learn from China, as the country has achieved comprehensive poverty alleviation by 2020, shifting the focus of poverty alleviation work to addressing relative poverty.

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