The poor and busy in the workplace: the salary is not enough, the time is not enough, how to get rid of the embarrassing situation in the new year?

Xiao Zhang went home for the New Year and planned to recharge at home. I don’t usually have time to watch it, so I want to take a few days off during the Chinese New Year to digest a few paid courses that I have stored in my computer.

Unexpectedly, half of the New Year's holiday has passed, and the course has not been seen at a glance.

Seeing that the study plan was about to fail, Xiao Zhang became anxious, thinking about how to make up for the lost time.

However, Xiao Zhang did turn on the computer whenever he was free, but he just didn't have enough time. It's either that you can't see it, or that your attention is attracted by other things. The more anxious you are, the more time you can't squeeze in.

A similar situation also occurs at work. Workers can’t wait for 48 hours a day, but it’s still not enough. The purse was like an ATM, however, it was quickly empty. The energy is like a chicken blood, however, it is quickly exhausted.

What is the reason for this?

In their book Scarcity, Harvard economist Sedhill Mullinathon and Princeton psychologist Eld Shafir tell us that the poor will always be short of money, and the busy will always be The main reason for the lack of time is: the scarcity mentality.

The poor and busy in the workplace: the salary is not enough, the time is not enough, how to get rid of the embarrassing situation in the new year?

What is scarcity mentality?

Often, we think our time, money, and energy are too tight, so we unconsciously develop a mentality: we only focus on how to increase these scarce resources.

For example, we are full of thoughts about how to work efficiently, make more time, and what kind of work to choose to make the money in our pocket grow rapidly.

However, this scarcity mentality not only fails to help us increase time utilization, but also does not increase our wages. On the contrary, it often results in that the more we want, the less we can get it.

Some people will say that it is not a good thing to focus on improving the utilization of time and finding ways to improve your earning skills? Why is it wrong?

The author believes that focusing too much on scarce resources will not only fail to improve concentration, but will actually affect one's long-term career prospects.

The poor and busy in the workplace: the salary is not enough, the time is not enough, how to get rid of the embarrassing situation in the new year?

The dangers of scarcity mentality

01Limited field of view

When we only focus on what is scarce in our eyes, we are unknowingly ignoring other valuable things. Our brains are like digging into the horns, desperate for scarce things, and our attention is only on getting those things that are not enough.

At this time, we have lost our rational judgment.

Subconsciously, we no longer judge whether these scarce resources are what we need, but feel that we have too few.

Such a mindset affects not only our judgment, but also our perception of the world around us.

It's like, we see the world through a small tube. Except for what we can see in the tube, everything else is out of sight, narrowing our field of vision, which naturally affects our mobility.

02 Loss of self-control

Xiao Zhang often feels that there is not enough time, so he hates having to sleep, skip meals, and spend all his time on work. However, even if Xiao Zhang shortens his sleep time, stays up late to work, eats without leaving the office, and orders takeout, but lack of sleep and long-term irregular diet make him listless at work, unable to concentrate, and emotionally anxious , forming a vicious circle.

A long-term scarcity mentality will stop people's behavior from obtaining scarce resources. Everything they do and think is for the benefit of the moment. Every day in life and work, they deal with things that cannot produce benefits in the future.

03 Insufficient buffer space

In this mentality, we are like running a marathon, without a chance to catch our breath, we are exhausted every day.

There will be no spare time to stop and seriously consider whether you have put all your energy on the pursuit of time and money, ignoring the most important things at the moment, how to use the resources at hand.

For example, when we first learned to ride a bicycle, we were afraid of overturning, and we always looked down at the road of the front wheel, but never looked at the future road. If we encounter a turn or there is someone coming in front of us, we don't even have time to react, so we can only slam into it abruptly.

The poor and busy in the workplace: the salary is not enough, the time is not enough, how to get rid of the embarrassing situation in the new year?

How to change the scarcity mentality

The scarcity mentality causes us to have a narrow vision, not enough time to think about our career development direction, and suffering from running for life.

01 Say goodbye to things you don't need

Distinguishing the concepts of owning and needing can help us stop blindly pursuing scarce resources that are not needed, free ourselves from limitations, and find resources that are useful for our career development in the long run.

There is not enough time and wages are not enough. The most fundamental reason is not busyness and poverty, but that we spend time on unimportant things and waste money on unnecessary things.

Find what you really need, and spend your time and money where you need it. For some trivial things at work, you can divide the labor with other people in the team, or discard some trivial things that you don’t need to do, and set aside more time for more important work. For example, you can have colleagues who are good at doing data integrate and check the data.

02 Set loose goals

In many cases, the shortage of resources is not because they are not enough, but because we use resources too tightly and have no room for them.

For example, we like to set the goals of the plan to the fullest and have a sense of accomplishment. However, when there is no buffer zone, once something unplanned occurs, you can only push back the original plan and increase your tension for no reason.

Therefore, at work, we choose to reserve enough time when we choose to work, and we must make a savings plan in our life, and set aside a fixed time for reading or waiting. Moreover, these reserved resources cannot be occupied at will.

03Maintain self-growth

To escape the scarcity mentality, we also need to constantly expand our horizons and increase our cognitive resources. In doing so, we will not only seize on what is in front of us and lose resources that are beneficial to our future growth.

If the shortage dilemma of today cannot be solved, it will only continue to be in shortage tomorrow. As we keep growing ourselves, shortages are just a temporary phenomenon.