I recently discovered the book “Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.” To be honest, I don’t even remember how I came to find out about the book. Maybe someone recommended it; maybe I read about it somewhere. Lately, I’ve been overwhelmingly busy, and, as a result, my short-term memory is shot.
Coincidentally, that’s what the book is about. Authors/researchers Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explain how our mental bandwidth changes when we don’t have enough of something — namely, time and money.
Contrary to the belief that poor decision-making leads to poverty, the book’s authors sought to prove that it’s actually the other way around: poverty (or scarcity) leads to poor decision-making. What’s more, scarcity creates an awful cycle of bad decisions. The authors point to study after study that proves this to be true.