notes app; challenging my scarcity mindset
opting for abundance
One of my actions at the start of the year was to set up a budget.
I didn’t want to set a budget for a year because a lot could change over the course of the year — knock wood, the whims of this economy can be quite dramatic.
I didn’t want to set a budget for a month because it’s not enough data to indicate whether it’s a good budget or not (my company pays fortnightly, thus this is only two pay cycles)
Alas, I settled for a quarter. How financial of me. But hey, it’s the perfect amount of time for me to collect data on my ins, outs, and whether this current budget is the right play for me.
(In other news, I’ll certainly have a retrospective post on how life treated me / I treated life over this first quarter of 2025. Given the size of it, I’m likely to procrastinate it to next dimension so let this be attestation that you WILL find it on this blog, one way or another, preferably before the end of April.)
With a Q1 pie of 55% spending, 25% investing and 20% saving — I had the underlying belief that my spending is hella overcooked and this would encourage a ton of unnecessary splurging.
Lo and behold, that 55% spending was roughly the amount of money I needed to maintain my lifestyle1.
I can’t call myself frugal but I’m definitely not one to regularly blow herculean levels of currency.
Likewise, I ain’t no Warren Buffet but I’ve got a decent safety net before finding myself on the streets.
But holy shit dude, this country is expensive.
And this is coming from someone who doesn’t have to deal with the cataclysmic Sydney rental market — these complaints on cost-of-living pressures come solely from the hiking price of groceries, the silent assassin of public transport fares, and the open-handed robbery of being served at a restaurant2.
A while back, I had an Ali Abdaal video playing in the background. He’s a creator who I had eventually stopped following as he got less and less relatable, but in this particular video, he referenced a uniquely great point from Meditatoins for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman.
“It’s a particular peril among the progressive-minded, I’ve noticed, to take the fact that a given choice might be unfeasible for the underprivileged as a reason not to make it yourself. But unless it’s you who’s underprivileged, that’s an alibi, not an argument.”
Like a lightbulb, thrown across the room, into my face — it made me question if I was operating on a scarcity mindset in terms of money.
I don’t think I was. It’s a weird thing to say because it’s not like I was pinching pennies, clipping coupons or churning credit cards in the name of a 2% cashback.
But I realise now that every time I opt for the woe-is-me mentality when I see Coles raise the price of laundry conditioner from $7 to $8 and coping it in the name of I-can’t-do-anything-about-it; I am calling upon that scarcity mindset.
It’s not the money. It’s never been about the money. Again, I’m super privileged and have a job and yada-yada-yada…
It’s a scarcity mindset towards my time and energy.
I mean, why else would I have ended up on Ali’s YouTube video that’s literally called ‘Watch this if you never have enough time’?
This time scarcity is something that has underpinned a vast majority of my Substack articles, especially in my notes app series.
From my frustration towards life administration, to the procrastination of my health and sleep, the deprioritisatoin of my identity and the universe reminding me time and time again that it would do me some good to just watch life go by, every now and then. I’ve very bravely attested that, simply put, nobody has enough time - a fact that pisses me off.
This scarcity, while I don’t actively say it, is an idea that underpins my 2024 retrospective where I mention that I haven’t acted with as much intentionality as I wanted.
I proclaim that intentionality is one of my most important pillars, but in the pursuit of trying to balance everything, my head is filled with dread and overwhelm and I end up doing a whole lotta nothing.
The events of this Monday were particularly exemplary of this.
I promised myself that I would write, even for half an hour, to polish up my upcoming post surrounding four lessons from my first job.
I had gotten off work a little than I wanted to because I was caught up in a meeting with my department head. That’s one extra hour past five o’clock that is what it is — but it’s really how I reacted to it that frustrated me.
Instead of recalling that promise to myself, I decided that I was determined to make dinner that day: and in particular, maybe because I was craving it, a chicken salad with soba and sesame sauce.
I didn’t have any salad so I stopped by the supermarket on the way home only for it to be completely cleared out.
I took the rail home and drove to my local supermarket instead which, lo and behold, also didn’t have any salad due to extreme weather conditions and, I kid you not — some kind of microbial issue.
Anyone who knows me knows that I love supermarkets. They trigger my hunter-gatherer instincts and I adore the myriad choice that comes with Australian agriculture, livestock and imports from almost wherever in the world. Cooking, too, is easily second to writing in terms of creative mediums I love partaking in.
But between those sicky fluorescent lights, shelves of inflatingly high prices and my ever-present stuffed nose that comes with transitioning seasons; time felt so damningly slow and blisteringly swift at the same time.
(And this didn’t just affect me that day. I have had an embarrassingly growing resentment towards the need to visit a grocery store.)
I arrived home at miraculous 10 o’clock and instead of, you know, pulling out my laptop or getting ready for bed or even cranking open Netflix — I proceeded to fire up that scarcity mindset and bash myself for letting my most precious resource go to waste, wasting even more of it.
But as you could see, my post about work was successfully posted for Tuesday - so what gives?
That night, I decided that I very much owed myself the writing session I promised me.
And so I did just that.
For the next hour or so, I clicked and clacked away against my keyboard, echoing lessons collected from my numerous professional mentor figures.
I was, truth be told, exhausted.
There were stacks of plates in the sink that belonged to me.
My underwear was still spinning in the washing machine.
I had to wake up early tomorrow for work.
But fuck me I did it anyway, despite how much it all weighed on me, because it’s something I had so dearly promised myself.
Because every time I break a promise, people lose faith in me.
And so if it’s a promise I made to myself, I lose faith in me.
And off we go into that scarcity mindset because if I can’t even trust myself, who else will?
That’s why I’m challenging myself here — on that scarcity mindset, that frustration towards money, time, energy, opportunity, mental bandwidth, determination, love, and whatever more resources the world has to offer.
(Because I realise I’m particularly eyeful at realising when others operate with a scarcity mindset and get really perturbed when they do so — oblivious to the fact that at times, I let it sit on my driver seat.)
Here’s to embedding rhythms and rituals into my life, something I had once viewed as locking away my freedom but in reality, are ports to which I can anchor my sense of time (Angel Cake has a great article on this).
Here’s to an open-mindedness towards spontaneous nighttime outings, even should it interfere with my plans for the following day; asking not for permission but forgiveness — for I have ordered 800 grams of malatang at two in the morning.
Here’s to taking both an auditor’s and artist’s lens on my budget, identifying which of my spend habits are just habits, and which of them are necessary to create the joyful rituals I so dearly need in my life.
Here’s to an abundance mindset, friends.
Drink up.
Pictured above: The homie Kam cooking up a ‘chopped sandwich’ during a weekend get-together.
What I’ve been reading recently:
If you were rich, would you fold laundry? by Inner Workings 🧺
I want to do everything, so I do nothing by all over the place 📜
white adidas sambas by Anna 👟
the gen z resilience drought by Voyeurism by Jordan Stacey 🌵
I did not spend the full 55% mind you — some of it sits in a unique saving account which I can access any time for big splurges e.g. trips, accommodation, renovations, technology, etc. I have not used this account much but it is money dedicated for spending and is thus in that category.
I have identified that about half of said 55% is spent on eating out. And again, this is coming from someone who cooks a lot. Fuck me.