the susie solution

One of the most enjoyable courses I ever did in homeschooling was in critical thinking.  We used a book from Critical Thinking Press (marvelous source for all kinds of thinking-related materials.)  The book first had a short course in logic (e.g. The statement “All dogs are mammals, and all mammals are animals, therefore all dogs are animals” is true, but the statement “All dogs are mammals and all cats are mammals therefore all dogs are cats” is NOT true.)  The book then presented various blind spots, mind traps, and slick tricks that people use and/or fall prey to, dissecting each of them carefully by applying the principles discussed in the first part.    Political speech and advertising, not surprisingly, provided that vast majority of fodder for the analysis.

One very successful sales ploy is the “limited time/amount” sale.  The “Call now!  Operators are standing by!  This offer good until only midnight tonight!” TV ads.  The “lowest price of the season” ads in the newspaper.  (Ever notice just how many “seasons” some stores have??)  The “Only 5,000 of these minted!  Don’t miss out!” commemorative coin.  The “I can only offer you this price today because the boss is on vacation” car deal.  Marketers know that there is something deep in our psyche that reacts to the idea that there won’t be enough of something to go around.

The weeks since my last post have been the calmest I’ve had since Thanksgiving, with only one or two minor unexpected things cropping up, and a few major issues resolved.  Although I know these days have had the precise number of minutes in them as any of the days preceding them, they’ve felt hours longer.  I’ve gotten so much done!  Last Thursday, I actually got my sewing machine out for the first time since mid-November.   I had only just started a set of curtains before Thanksgiving was upon us, so I hastily got them done enough that I could at least hang them from the rod so our guests would have something nicer than an old sheet over the window.  With Mama’s cancer diagnosis coming right after Thanksgiving, and all that has been since, I hadn’t touched those curtains again.  I’ve now gotten them done, and not only the curtains, but two covers for throw pillows on the couch.  Hurray!!!

Why didn’t I get them done before now?  I just didn’t have the time.  No time.  No time.  That’s been my mantra for the last 7 months:  I don’t have time.  I don’t have time.  “No time” became a reason – or an  excuse – for not doing all kinds of things.  Exercise?  No time.  Eat right?  No time.  Keep in touch with friends?  No time.  Work on projects?  No time.

I’m not denying that things have been quite hectic – they have been – but two things recently have helped me realize that it was my perception of how busy things were that had more to do with the problem that the actuality of what was going on.

The first thing was that I read an interesting article in Readers Digest a month ago about insights from a book called “Scarcity:  Why Having Too Little Means So Much”  (by Shafir and Mullainathan).  The book’s authors are social scientists who have studied people in the context of a variety of contexts of scarcity – people who are financially poor, people who are extraordinarily busy, people who are dieting, people who lack social companionship – and what they have found is quite interesting.   To quote the RD article,

“…whenever we perceive a lack of something – be it food, money, or… time – we become so  absorbed by it that our thinking is altered. … ‘Scarcity captures the mind.’  the authors write.  ‘The mind orients automatically, powerfully, toward unfulfilled needs.’ … in all kinds of  circumstances, the psychological effect of scarcity was remarkably similar:  a kind of tunnel    vision that can help us focus on the immediate need … but that can also have negative long-       term consequences, both in terms of ignoring other important areas of our lives and not making       good decisions for the future.  ….  Fluid intelligence, cognitive capacity, and executive control all   come under what Shafir and Mullainathan term mental ‘bandwidth,’ and even the slightest               suggestion of scarcity taxes our ability to reason properly, control our impulses, and think clearly.”  [emphasis added]

So, for example, the chronically poor may be great at squeezing 6 nickels out of a quarter, but they tend to be poor at making decisions that will lead to longer-term financial stability.  People who are dieting may become so focused on what they are eating – or rather, on what they are NOT eating – that they can’t focus on their work.  Looking back, not only on these last 7 months, but on other hectic times in my life, I can clearly see scarcity-mindset-induced tunnel vision, poor impulse control, and brain fog in my own life.  Faced with a belief in the scarcity of some resource, we all fall prey to the same kinds of effects.

The other thing that happened that jolted my thinking about how much time I have was a conversation with my younger son.   When he dies, his epitaph should be, “I was reading this article the other day….”  You see, he is ALWAYS reading.  He pulls up the most interesting facts and theories from all kinds of sources about all kinds of subjects.   What amazes me is where he finds the time to fit it in!  You see, at the time of the conversation I refer to, he was spending time every day working out to keep in top physical shape, as is expected for a physical trainer.  And taking a class in Muy Thai kickboxing.  And one in jujitsu.  And learning how to kite board.  He had a standing pool game night with friends once a week.  Played in an ultimate Frisbee league every week.  Went for frequent hikes with friends.  Was working part-time 20 to 30 hours a week.  And, oh, yeah, did I mention he was in his last quarter of his senior year getting his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology?  I asked him if he actually did things like, you know, sleep.  Eat.  Relax.  He responded, “Mom, there are 168 hours in every week.  Even getting the 8 hours of sleep a night that I do still leaves 112.  My various classes and work and hanging out take about 80 hours a week, which still leaves around 30 hours for other things.  Besides, reading is as ‘relaxed’ as I get.  My brain’s always moving!”

Hmmm…..

I have those same 168 hours in MY week.  I added up how I typically use them and frankly, it’s too embarrassing to share!  I wasted more time than I want to admit watching TV or catching up on facebook, or doing things that, while more-or-less useful didn’t advance the causes that really needed advancing. There’s a considerable amount of time that I simply can’t account for.  I am not the ADHD Energizer bunny that my son is, so it’s not that I would expect to rival his level of activity, but I can see now that even in the busiest of my weeks, I actually HAD time that I could have used to get things that mattered done.

Instead, I had tunnel-vision, getting hung up on the idea of needing large blocks of time to do things, rather than breaking projects down into their component tasks that would take smaller blocks.  Those curtains?  It took four hours total to finish them.  That’s only 8 half-hour sessions, or 12 of 20 minutes, or even 24 of just 10.  There’s no way I couldn’t have found that much time in the last 7 months.  Ditto with finishing the pillow covers or any of the other many sewing projects languishing on my sewing table, or the many computer projects waiting to be done, or who knows what all else! (Writing blog posts, unfortunately, isn’t something I can do in snatches.  It would be like trying to swim laps in a wading pool!)

Going back to the “poor decision-making” aspect of the scarcity mindset, I can see how many times I did something that “saved” time for the short-term that actually COST time in the long run.  For example, if I put something down “for now” where it doesn’t belong, I may forget where I put it, resulting in time spent looking for it, or the object will gather friends around it, resulting in taking a much longer time to put everything away than it would have taken to put them each away properly in the first place.  Oftentimes I didn’t take time to plan things out thoroughly, resulting in backtracking, undoing, redoing, leaving things undone, and so on.  Taking the time to plan things in the right order would have cost time in the short run, but saved time in the long run.

All this has gotten me thinking about how we fall into the same scarcity trap spiritually.  When we worry about running out of any earthly resource, what we’re really worrying about is whether we are going to run out of God as well!  We start acting as if we were on our own, having to fend for ourselves.  We get the same tunnel vision, unable to see anything but our fear.  We have the same poor impulse control, jumping at anything that looks like a solution.  We lose our ability to reason, our minds “hamster wheeling” round and round on “what ifs.”

God promised that HE will always be sufficient.  Always.  If we don’t have time to do all that we need to do, HE will be sufficient to deal with the consequences of anything left undone.  If we don’t have money enough to pay our bills, HE will be sufficient to help us deal with the consequences.  If we never meet that “Mr./Miss Right”, then HE will be sufficient to help us live a life as full as the single life He lived.  Whatever our shortage, His grace is sufficient.  His strength is sufficient.  His power is sufficient.  HE is what we need, nothing less, nothing more.  There’s no such thing as scarcity when it comes to God.  He has never run out, and never will.  If we focus on how much there is to have of Him, we’ll lose our fear of not having enough of anything else.

His is the Best Ever exclusive, limited time offer.  It’s only good for His children, and only good for Eternity.  Don’t wait!  Call now!