You’re Out of Time
Scarcity and its Discontents
If you don’t act fast, you’re going to miss out. This is a once-in-lifetime, limited-time offer, and the clock is ticking. Everyone else is taking advantage. What. Are. You. Waiting. For?
Do you ever wake up and feel like the clock is impatiently gnawing away at your day?
Before you even get out of bed, you can feel like you’re already behind. If phone alerts aren’t jolting you into action, then it’s your email, or your calendar, or your Sisyphean to-do list. Or maybe it’s just the good, old-fashioned cacophony of demands, obligations, and commitments racing through your mind.
Many Americans have fallen into a social trap. We believe the myth that time is scarce. If we don’t seize the day right now, we will be wasting our lives away slothfully. We believe that productivity means doing as much as fast as we possibly can.
If you can just be more productive than everyone else, then you will reap the rewards of all this effort and efficiency. If you just pinball your way through life — bouncing from appointment to meeting to activity to chore to obligation — then the universe will afford you the means to buy up all the stuff and do all the things that make people look so happy on social media.
