Can you let your phone battery drop to 10% without stressing?

I have a hypothesis that you can learn about a person’s core traits by checking for a very basic signal: whether they are comfortable letting their phone battery drop to 10% or less before they go looking for a charger¹.

In my mind, these signal a person with an Abundance mindset, optimistic that there will always be something nearby which can solve their problem. It also signals a high risk-tolerance, where they are either ok with the consequences, or just don’t even think about them. I see this on Zoom calls at work all the time, where someone is presenting a critical presentation with a battery sitting at 5%, and it’s all I can do to not scream my anxiety to the heavens.

On the opposite end, you have someone like me, who is coming at it with a Scarcity mindset (though i’m working on growing out of this!). If my phone drops below even 60%, I start looking for a charger to top it back off. It shows up in other areas of life as well, like refilling the filtered water jug, even when it’s 80% full. It’s the “Just in Case” approach to preparedness, with the assumption that a drought could be just around the corner (of many types, could be a “drought” of no phone chargers, for example). It’s the kind of person who embodies the mantra “you’d rather have it and not need it, than need it and not have it”.

What should you do with this information? That’s up to you! At a baseline, it doesn’t hurt to better understand your friends/family/coworker’s motivations.