Thank you The Bathrobe Guy (Robes) 👘, Mother Hood, Hillary Marek, and many others for tuning into my live video with Margaret Williams, MS, ACC! It was truly an honor to spend time with you all in this busy holiday season, and for many of us, busy season of life.
In my work with in person clients for Sorted State, people often come to me expecting a conversation about perfectly labeled bamboo jars or how to color-code their bookshelves. They think organization is about aesthetics. But what I am really about is time. Time is our most finite resource; we cannot get more of it. My goal is always to give people that time back through the systemic development of optimized processes.
I recently sat down with my co-host, Margaret Williams, MS, ACC , to talk about a topic that colors the background of almost every organizational struggle I see: the battle between a scarcity mindset and an abundance mindset. This isn’t just a buzzword-heavy conversation about “manifesting” wealth. It is about understanding that our brains are hardwired for a world that no longer exists, and how that wiring impacts everything from our pantries to how we show up as The Empowered Leader in the workplace.
The Evolutionary Trap
To understand why we feel just so overwhelmed, we have to spend a moment talking about our shared history. The term “scarcity mindset” was pioneered by Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir1 and it describes a psychology driven by the fear that resources are limited.
Right, so my education is in biology, and I always go back to the biologist in me when talking about evolution and how our ancient brains inform our responses to stimuli. 10,000 years ago, no one was worried about their 401(k) or saving for a bathroom renovation. They were worried about preventing theft of their food and staying warm enough to survive the night. The humans who were “good” at scarcity - the ones who hoarded resources and fixated on immediate survival - were the ones who survived to pass on their DNA.
We are the descendants of the anxious and the hoarders and our default wiring is scarcity. This is not speculation, it’s fact, and it serves us all well to accept it. The problem is that biological evolution cannot catch up to the speed of modern society. We are like chess pieces trying to compete in a high-speed video game; we simply do not have the tools for this environment.
“Tunneling” is one of those direct, observable outcomes of our scarcity mindset - it’s causative not correlative. When we tunnel in on obtaining more of what we perceive to have as a finite resource, we become hyper-focused on immediate problems and lose the ability to plan for the future. It creates massive decision fatigue. There is no fuel gauge in our brain that tells us when we are running on empty. That is why, after a day of taxing meetings, you are never going to say no to the dessert menu, your capacity to overcome emotional impulses is depleted.
This is also where our personal history with scarcity comes into play. You may have grown up with true scarcity, or you may have had a recent scare (I was one of those moms affected by the formula shortage in 2022 - I was lucky that my daughter was transitioning to solids already.) I’m no armchair psychologist, but if you have trauma associated with scarcity, know that this can impact how you shift from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset.
Moving From Scarcity to Abundance
So, how do we combat 10,000 years of evolutionary programming? It’s not just about optimism or positive thinking. I have a very objective, analytical mind. I need practical systems, not toxic positivity!
Here are three concrete ways I apply the Sorted State philosophy to shift my mindset from scarcity to abundance.
1. The “Worst-Case” Risk Assessment (Finances)
Financial anxiety is a major trigger for scarcity thinking. The standard advice is to “practice gratitude,” and while I think gratitude is excellent, for me, it is too cerebral to stop the panic of “OMG I don’t have enough money!”
Here’s my practical solution. I stop and write out the worst possible outcomes for the next six months. I get specific about my fears: What if the car breaks down? What if there is a home repair? How much could these things cost? (I look up estimates, either with a search engine or a generative AI model → Gemini is my current fav.)
I then perform a risk assessment. I might do something like - look at my older Hyundai and say, “Okay, there is a 25% chance this needs a repair.” but I’m also pretty healthy, so the likelihood of needing a medical intervention is lower, maybe 3%. (Okay, to get numbers like this, you just need to look at the last 1-2 years. How many times has “x” occurred? For things like cars, you can increase slightly, by maybe 10% due to time.)
By writing it down, I move the fear from my emotional brain to my logical brain. I can see where the true scarcity is versus where my perception is lying to me. It allows me to build a plan for the worst-case scenario, which is actually the most effective way to foster an abundance mindset because it removes the teeth from the fear.
2. Just-In-Time Inventory (The “Stuff”)
We have all been there: You are at the grocery store, you see pasta is “10 for $10,” and suddenly you have ten boxes of pasta in your cart. That is the scarcity mindset - the fear that the sale is a limited resource you must capture.
In the manufacturing world, we use a concept called “Just-In-Time” inventory. You don’t stockpile parts you don’t need because inventory requires management and also equals tied up cash reserves. Even worse, it could become dead stock (what if someone in your home develops a gluten allergy!) The same applies to your home. Managing an inventory of toilet paper or pasta takes up mental bandwidth.
I encourage a shift to intentional shopping. I shop once a week, and I plan loosely around that week. If you open my fridge, you might think it looks empty, but I have exactly enough for seven nights of meals. Having extra just means things go bad and you throw money away.
Also, hot tip. Margaret brought up “and never shop hungry.” There’s more to unpack here than just my stomach makes me buy things. When we go to the store hungry or without a plan, our stomach hormones impact our brain and override our logic, telling us food is a limited resource. By trusting that the store will still be there next week, and that resources are available, we stop letting the isle end cap promotions and sales dictate our lives.
3. Backwards Planning and The Eisenhower Matrix (Time)
Time scarcity makes us reactive. We say “yes” to everything because we are risk-averse; we fear that if we don’t do this task right now, we might lose our standing.
To combat this, I use backwards planning. If I have a goal - say, signing three new clients by January - I track back from that date to see what actually fits on the calendar. It forces realism. If I believe X goal is true, what else needs to be true to get there?
In the workplace, this = boundaries. When I was in the corporate world, I had just given birth to my first kid, and time was becoming a huge bottleneck. So, I added a little tactic to manage requests - if a boss asks for something urgently, I often wait for the second ask. If they ask twice, they mean it. Then, I use an Eisenhower Matrix (a fancy word for an impact/effort matrix). I show them my active projects and ask them to plot their new request on that matrix. Fifty percent of the time, they realize it’s actually not that important and tell me not to do it.
This requires a certain fearlessness, a belief that jobs are renewable resources. If a job doesn’t respect my time, I can find another one. That is the ultimate abundance mindset: knowing the “pie” of opportunity is not fixed. We can just bake a bigger pie.
You’re killing it!
Adopting these systems is not about an overnight overhaul. In LEAN methodology, we talk about Kaizen: continuous improvement. It is about making small, iterative changes. If you make a small change and it’s wrong, you can course-correct easily. If you wait until you are paralyzed by analysis and then make a drastic, pendulum-swinging change, and it goes belly-up, the fallout is much harder to manage.
We have to give ourselves grace. Every time we choose abundance (every time we don’t buy the extra pasta, every time we set a boundary at work) we are fighting 10,000 years of biology. We are rewriting our internal code.
Ultimately, Sorted State isn’t just about organizing your kitchen. It is about refusing to perform for the sake of performance. It is about realizing that function is more important than form. We don’t need to hoard, we don’t need to perform, and we don’t need to live in fear. We are incredibly lucky to live in a time where we can choose abundance. Let’s stop managing the inventory of our lives and start actually living them.
Mullainathan, Sendhil, and Eldar Shafir. Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much. Times Books, 2013
