Doing Without: Sunday’s Unchained Melody
I’m thinking through poverty with an analogy from the Philippines.
When I started visiting here in 2009, I could buy a 4’x8’ bamboo mat for 40 pesos, handmade in the province of Cebu. Today, that same mat costs 250 pesos. Despite a lesser percentage increase in my western income, I can still afford this rise. But for locals in poverty, this price hike means doing with less or “doing without.”
When rice goes up, poor people eat less, they don’t pay more!
Rewind to the USA during the Great Depression in the 1930s, where my grandfather earned $1 a day with a 6th-grade education. “Doing without” was a principle born from the disparity between income and expenses, and this concept is resurfacing today due to similar economic (crazy) disparities.
Even today the poor live like past kings!
However, generations accustomed to technological gains often lack the practice of saving and delaying gratification — my connection to “doing without.”
This raises a question: Are there things we’ve grown used to that we will have to “do without”?
Make a list? Check it twice!
Creating a list of things, we could really do without, seems prudent.
Compounding is not good or bad but both!
The world often overlooks the power of compounding — small, low-cost actions taken regularly, can yield significant dividends over time. For more on this, check out my Teachable Point of View (TPOV) on COMPOUNDING @
https://www.leadu.com/newsletters/tpovs/compounding.
Bottom-line?
You don’t have to do without anything you need if you’re not deceived by what you think you want. The secret lies in self-knowledge and the often ‘tiny’ bit of self-awareness available to us.
Needs, Not Wants, Ushered by Marketing Ubiquity?
Paul Mazur, a Lehman Brothers Investment Advisor during the 1930s Great Depression, said:
“Any community that lives on staples has relatively few wants. The community that can be trained to desire change, to want new things even before the old have been entirely consumed, yields a market to be measured more by desires than by needs. And man’s desires can be developed so that they will greatly overshadow his needs.”
Quotes attributed to him have appeared after his book:
“We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”
This perspective sheds light on our growth and consumption-driven society and the booming storage business.
How Do We Know What We Need?
It’s simple, but not easy.
Learning what we will truly sacrifice for is challenging in a noisy world that constantly tells us we need more. The more problems you solve, the more you create in VUCA!
Sometimes, doing without is wiser than exchanging one problem for another more complex one.
Betting on the Come!
Reflecting on my grandparents’ experiences during the depression, I once told them they really knew how to suffer, referencing their careful spending and saving habits. They were masters of doing without and making do — skills (desire) many of us have lost?
Wisdom Is Not All Around!
It’s interesting how wisdom can go unrecognized while we fool ourselves, as Feynman noted. Credit is simply a claim on future income — with interest. Think about that for 10 seconds and read it again.
Getting to know yourself might be the best investment you can make — it offers the best ROI. Doing without what you don’t need prevents problems that naturally arise.
A penny saved (not credited) is 15% greater than a penny earned, ceteris paribus.

All-in @ leadu.com/news
Join us,
Our team at Living & Loving Inquiry
Mike R Jay & Gary Gile
Founders @ The NEW LeadU
Subscribe @ leadu.com/news
PS: For clarification
- If you just want notice of the blog posts subscribe @ leadu.blog
- If you want the blog content by email, our weekly newsletter, and breaking news, subscribe @ leadu.com/news.
- Disclaimer

Notice: To pre-order a copy of Mike’s latest book mentioned in some of his posts in e-book format for $9.97 (available by October 3rd and/or $39.98 hardcover (preorder) with autograph

If you have any comments, questions, suggestions, or need some additional help, please visit https://www.leadu.com/comment/ to submit them. Someone will get back to you within 48 hours.

We hope you pick up valuable insights, ideas, and
tools during this process, which you can use for your own development as
well as your work and leadership with others.
You, Me, and We @LeadU
Mike R. Jay is a developmentalist utilizing consulting, coaching, mentoring, and trusted advice emergent from dynamic inquiry as a means to cue, scaffold, support, lift, and protect; offering inspiration to aspiring leaders who are interested in humaning where being, doing, having, becoming, contributing, protecting, and letting go help people have generative lives.



© Generati