Scarcity: Why having too little means so much

by Sendhil Mullainathan

Scarcity captures the mind.

Just as in the thought experiment above, the group with tighter deadlines was more productive.

When time is short, you get more out of it, be it work or pleasure. We call this the focus dividend—the positive outcome of scarcity capturing the mind.

The focus dividend—heightened productivity when facing a deadline or the accuracy advantage of the blueberry poor—comes from our core mechanism: scarcity captures the mind. The word capture here is essential: this happens unavoidably and beyond our control. Scarcity allows us to do something we could not do easily on our own.

Focusing on one thing means neglecting other things.

Focus is a positive: scarcity focuses us on what seems, at that moment, to matter most. Tunneling is not: scarcity leads us to tunnel and neglect other, possibly more important, things.

This is a basic feature of the mind: focusing on one thing inhibits competing concepts. Inhibition is what happens when you are angry with someone, and it is harder to remember their good traits: the focus on the annoying traits inhibits positive memories.

Focusing on something that matters to you makes you less able to think about other things you care about. Psychologists call this goal inhibition.