Enthusiastic Reader’s Reviews > Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much > Status Update

"At a moment of focus on the importance of exercise... do what you can for this motivation to linger once you've tunneled elsewhere."

"Paradoxically, scarcity increases the chance you'll need a quick fix, as well as the chance that some such fixes will hurt you."

"Yet so many good behaviors require vigilance: being a good parent, saving money, or eating right."

"Increasing work hours, working people harder, forgoing vacations, and so on are all tunneling responses, like borrowing at high interest. They ignore the long-term consequences."

(continued) Dealing with patients quickly lowered quality: patients were more likely to die. In fact, even the benefits did not persist. A sustained increase in workload eventually led to an increase in the time it took to manage each patient."

"Another study looked at what happened in a cardiothoracic surgery department when the number of patients per medical service worker increased. Again, there was an increase in productivity in the short run. Patients were dealt with more quickly. But this came at a cost. There was neglect. (continued)

"One study, on construction projects, found that 'where a work schedule of 60 or more hours per week is continued longer than about two months, the cumulative effect of decreased productivity will cause a delay in the completion date beyond that which could have been realized with the same crew size on a 40-hour week.'"

"frequent interim deadlines have a greater impact than a single distant deadline."

"A long-term limit, like a distant deadline, becomes pressing only as it approaches, toward the end."

"An overtaxed bandwidth means a reduced ability to process new information. How much of a lecture will you absorb if your mind constantly gets pulled away? Now think of a low-income college student whose mind keeps going back to making rent. How much will she absorb? Our data above suggest that much fo the correlation between income and classroom performance may be explained by the bandwidth tax."