For the past few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with a 36-hour fast every Thursday.
I finish dinner Wednesday night, don’t eat all day Thursday, and break the fast Friday morning.
At first, it was a logistics problem in my head:
- Will my energy crash?
- Will I still be able to get work done?
- Will I turn into a monster around my family by 8pm?
But this week, something else became obvious.
The fast didn’t just change how my body felt. It changed how I operated.
All day Thursday, I was more contained. More conservative. More deliberate about what I spent energy on.
I went into scarcity mode.
And it felt… familiar.
Today we’re talking about why scarcity mode feels so natural to Fives, what it’s actually for, and how you can use it to prepare for your next stage of growth.
The Five mode hiding in plain sight
When life feels demanding, most Fives don’t blow up.
We quietly pull in.
We reduce output. We limit access. We hold onto what we already have. Not in a dramatic way, but in a practical way.
We become careful about:
- Who has access to us
- Where our energy goes
- How much time anything gets
From the outside, it can look like calm or self-sufficiency.
On the inside, it feels like constant management.
Nothing is obviously wrong, but everything is being measured and conserved.
Autophagy, but for your life
Fasting gave me a great lens for what’s happening here.
When resources are abundant, your body focuses on growth. When resources are limited (like during a fast), it switches into autophagy (cleanup mode).
It stops building and starts:
- Breaking down damaged cells
- Recycling useful components
- Clearing out inefficiencies
Our Five conservation strategy works the same way.
When we pull back and conserve, things get clearer. Our nervous system settles. Internal noise drops.
We feel more in control.
That’s why scarcity mode feels so functional... it actually does something important.
The problem isn’t that this mode exists. The problem comes when it never ends.
When scarcity becomes the lifestyle
Autophagy isn’t meant to run forever. If it never turns off, your body starts breaking itself down until it's no longer functional.
Our Five scarcity mode is the same.
We tend to stay in this careful, contained state long after it’s done its job. We keep living like resources are scarce, even when they’re not (especially when they're not).
That’s when patterns show up like:
- Keeping thoughts to yourself
- Researching but never starting
- Staying on the sidelines of communities
- Feeling tired and flat despite all your “rest”
Life gets quieter, but it also gets smaller.
Because scarcity mode was always meant to be temporary.
What scarcity is actually for
Here’s the light bulb moment:
Scarcity mode is meant to prepare you for your next phase of growth.
- Fasting clears space. Eating is builds strength.
- Withdrawal creates clarity. Engagement expands capacity.
- Conservation stabilizes. Movement brings things back to life.
As Fives, we’re excellent at the first half of that cycle. We know how to pull back, reduce noise, and live with less. What we struggle with is recognizing when the conservation is done, when the “fast” has served its purpose and it’s time to feed the system again.
This is where “abundance” gets confusing. We hear abundance and imagine chaos, endless demands, reckless output.
But abundance doesn’t mean binging.
It means intentional re-feeding. Nourishing instead of hoarding. Letting life cost something again, on purpose.
The question that signals it’s time to shift
Most Fives live inside some version of:
We wait for a feeling of complete readiness: enough clarity, enough energy, enough proof that we'll have what it takes.
But, that question keeps us stuck in scarcity mode, because ready is a moving target.
A more useful question is:
“What did this scarcity mode prepare me for?”
What is clearer now than it was before? What feels ready to be used, not just understood? Where am I still conserving out of habit instead of necessity?
You don’t have to abandon your strategy. You just have to let it complete its arc.
Your experiment this week
For the next seven days, try this:
- Pick one area you’ve been conserving. Work, relationships, creativity, health, etc. Go with the one that comes to mind first.
- Ask the new question. Take five minutes and journal on: What did scarcity mode prepare me for in this area? Don’t overthink it. Bullet points are fine.
- Choose one “re-feed” action. Something tiny but real that spends a bit of the energy you’ve been hoarding: send one message, ship one small piece of work, schedule one thing, share one idea.
Then notice:
- Do you feel more drained, or slightly more alive?
- Does the situation feel heavier, or a little more possible?
You’re not trying to jump from scarcity to excess.
You’re just testing what happens when you treat your "fasting" phase as preparation for your next stage of growth.
And when you do, you might just find out how hungry you really are.