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

by Michael Easter

“People systematically overlook subtraction,” Klotz told me. “If people were thinking about either addition or subtraction, then choosing to add, it would be one thing. But if people aren’t even thinking of this basic option of subtraction, then that’s a big problem. This is arguably the most fundamental question about how we change and make things better. Am I going to add, do more, or am I going to take away, do less? And we are finding that people systematically overlook the option of subtraction and doing less.” His research landed on the cover of the prestigious journal Nature in 2021. Once we see this phenomenon, we see it everywhere. To toss out a few random recent examples: Federal regulations are seventeen times longer than in 1950. American homes are three times larger than they were in 1970. We own 233 percent more clothes than we did in 1930. Restaurant portion sizes are four times larger compared with 1950. Everything from our cars, to refrigerators, to microwaves, to coffeemakers is larger and packed with techy smart features (like, why does my dishwasher need to connect to the cloud?). Incoming university presidents are nearly ten times more likely to add new programs than they are to subtract programs that aren’t working. “Yes, and…” is the rule of improv comedy, and the phrase has been adopted as a line by the business community. Entire industries like academia and medicine have experienced a 44 percent ballooning of professional administrators since the e...