Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much Read Online Free PDF

they do? Of course, the rich scored more points because they had more blueberries to shoot with. But looked at another way, the poor did better: they were more accurate with their shots. This was not because of some magical improvement in visual acuity. The poor took more time on each shot. (There was no limit on how long they could take.) They aimed more carefully. They had fewer shots, so they were more judicious. The rich, on the other hand, just let the blueberries fly. It is not that the rich, simply because they had more rounds, got bored and decided to spend less time on the task. Nor is it that they became fatigued. Even on the first shots they were already less focused and less careful than the poor. This matches our prediction. Having fewer blueberries, the blueberry poor enjoyed a focus dividend.
    In a way it is surprising that blueberry scarcity had effects similar to those observed with deadlines—time scarcity. Having few blueberries in a video game bears little resemblance to having only a few minutes left in a meeting or only a few hours to finish a project. Focusing on each shot, how far back to pull the sling, and when to release bears little resemblance to the complex choices that determineconversation and pace at work. We had stripped the world of all its complexity, all except for scarcity, and yet the same behavior emerged. These initial blueberry results illustrate how—whatever else may happen in the world—scarcity by itself can create a focus dividend.
    The observed effects of scarcity in controlled conditions show one more thing. In the real world, the poor and the rich differ in so many ways. Their diverse backgrounds and experiences lead them to have different personalities, abilities, health, education, and preferences. Those who find themselves working at the last minute under deadline may simply be different people. When they are seen to behave differently, scarcity may be one reason, but any of several other differences may be playing a role as well. In Angry Blueberries, a coin flip determined who was “rich” (in blueberries) and who was “poor.” Now, if these individuals are seen to behave differently, it cannot be attributed to any systematic inherent personal differences; it must be due to the one thing that distinguishes between them: their blueberry scarcity. By creating scarcity in the lab in this way, we can untangle scarcity from the knots that usually surround it. We know that scarcity itself must be the reason.
    The focus dividend—heightened productivity when facing a deadline or the accuracy advantage of the blueberry poor—comes from our core mechanism: scarcity captures the mind. The word
capture
here is essential: this happens unavoidably and beyond our control. Scarcity allows us to do something we could not do easily on our own.
    Here, again, the game provides a suggestive glimpse. In theory, the rich in Angry Blueberries could have employed a strategy that simulated being poor. They could have used only three shots each round (like the poor) and saved the rest. This would have led them to play twice as many rounds as the “truly” poor and thus allowed them to earn twice as many points. In actuality, the blueberry rich did not earn anywhere near twice as much in the course of each game. Of course, the players may not have realized this strategy. But even if they had, they would not have been able to do much about it.
    Itis very hard to fake scarcity. The scarcity dividend happens because scarcity imposes itself on us, capturing our attention against all else. We saw that this happened in a way that is beyond conscious control—happening in milliseconds. It is why an impending deadline lets us avoid distractions and temptations so readily—it actively pushes them away. Just as we cannot effectively tickle ourselves , it is exceedingly difficult to fool ourselves into working harder by faking a deadline. An imaginary deadline will be just that: imagined. It will