Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough

by Michael Easter

Benedict wrote the Rule in the year 516 to guide those monasteries. The Rule eventually became the standard guidebook for Western monastic life, whether monks were Benedictine or not. That’s because, in true Benedict style, the Rule was “neither harsh nor burdensome….[H]e tried to govern his disciples by love rather than dominate them by fear,” wrote Pope Pius XII. Pius XII explained, “The community life of a Benedictine house tempered and softened the severities of the solitary life, not suitable for all and even dangerous at times for some.” The Rule has been called genius in its adaptability, prudence, discretion, and balance of severity and mildness. Benedict inherently understood that cut-and-dried rules often leave too many people high and dry. The monks have a saying, “To some, more is given. To others, less.” For example, a monk who thrives off social interaction may be assigned to a job that allows him to talk more. Days of fasting are also individual; the idea is to take whatever amount of food feels like a sacrifice for you. And most of the monks avoid meat, but some brothers, especially the young who work the physically hardest jobs, eat it to fuel their labor. This regimen of finding and doing with enough, Benedict taught, allows us to focus on what truly matters: time where we discover that something larger than ourselves isn’t absent from everyday life. Benedict believed we find higher purpose and satisfaction in helping others, experiencing and making creat...

In the 1950s, a group of scientists surveyed a range of the country’s researchers about their work habits. They found, quite paradoxically, that more work didn’t lead to more productivity. The researchers who worked hard twenty hours a week pumped out the most scientific articles. They released double the number of studies than did their counterparts who spent thirty-five hours a week in the lab. But those thirty-five-hour researchers were far better off than the ones who spent sixty hours in the lab. The latter group produced the fewest articles. Follow-up research suggests that working four hours daily allows us to find the sweet spot between hard work and adequate rest. We can work intensely for four hours and get a lot of good work done. Less than that and we leave performance on the table. More than that and we become likely to overdo it. To get injured by physical work, to get burned out by mental work. And this cuts into our future workdays.

A manual hobby can create an abundance loop because it’s active and rewarding in a way that produces something tangible.

As a science journalist and professor, I believe science offers us many answers. But through all my time on the ground speaking to people across the spectrum of living, I’ve learned that some of the most important things about being a human—the things that most change a person’s and a community’s life for the better—can’t be measured. For thousands of years, we got to these “things,” these ideas, through myth and ritual. Then science came in and started to help explain why certain ideas and traditions work or don’t. We started measuring in numbers and data and figures. Somewhere along the way we devalued those most important unmeasurables. In my work and thinking, I now think of it as balancing science with soul. Too much science, and we lose the most important aspects of the human experience. Too much soul, and we can lead ourselves into delusion. I’ve seen ideas of religion both enhance and ruin lives. Despite my wavering, the most good in my life has come when I’m more in tune with my blurry notion of God and getting out of myself. So let’s call it a draw.

The research suggests that we should try what we believe works best for us. For example, one study found that stressed-out Catholics saw greater reductions in their heart rate and other stress measures when they prayed versus meditated. Meanwhile, a person drawn to meditation would probably do better with meditation. After analyzing the research, I couldn’t help but feel that it isn’t how you’re praying. It’s that you’re praying. So whether it’s a prayer to Jesus or Allah or meditating on koans or your breath or, as Mary Oliver explained her own practice, “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields.” Just do something that helps you get out of yourself. Once I’d put in a collective twenty sessions in the chapel, I discovered that I fall more into the Oliver camp. My favorite part of each day occurred at 6:45 a.m. As the brothers finished Psalms and lapsed into silent prayer, I’d slip out of the chapel. I’d sit on the cloister stairs to watch the sun rising over the wilderness. I’d notice the birds being birds, the bugs being bugs, and the sun bending and illuminating a new day. I don’t think that these brothers are wrong about their take on silence. Silence is when we hear.

“It seemed so blatantly artificial. Nobody I worked with actually wanted to be in Midland. But the only reason they were was for money,” he said. The idea, Father Matthew explained, was that you would, until you hit sixty-three, do a job you didn’t want to do, in a place you didn’t want to be, so you could drive a car you paid multiple times the average American income for. And you would then show off that car to other people who were working a job they didn’t want to work, in a place they didn’t want to be, so they too could drive fancy cars.