The Scarcity Trap

I thought this was really good advice, so I’m passing it along in case it resonates with you, too. It speaks to artists, but I think everyone — regardless of your job or if you don’t have a job — enters a scarcity mindset from time to time.

She defines the scarcity mindset:

Scarcity mindset is the state of believing that what you want is in limited supply. That you will never have enough of that thing.

You could have this feeling around money, time, connections, status, or security. If you experience scarcity around connection, you feel lonely. If you experience scarcity around status, you feel undervalued.

It’s any time that you feel anxious that you don’t have enough or you’re somehow behind or you’ll never catch up to peers, and it almost always accompanies a comparison because without that benchmark, how can your brain know how you stack up?

She doesn’t just provide the definition. She goes into the three things that happen when you’re in a scarcity mindset and ways to tackle it. I’ve been using her recommendation to set a timer, do the task, and walk away. If you reached your goal (e.g., write for a half hour or send three job applications), then it doesn’t matter how anyone else does. You’ve reached your own finish line.

There is a lot of scarcity messaging out there, keeping that idea that you don’t have enough or you’re getting behind front and center in our brains. Find the source and remove it. It’s not that it’s not true — things are pretty bad out there right now — but you don’t need to keep hearing the message.