I was listening to Naval's podcast today and one of the sayings he quoted in it was, "A sick man wants just one thing - to get better. A healthy man, on the other hand, wants ten thousand things."

This has certainly been true in my own experience.

When something is amiss and is bothering me - be it a sickness of the body, a stressor for the mind, some kind of pressure I'm in, crippling fear of failure, etc - all I want is for that thing that is bothering me to go away or be resolved. 

Until that happens, it is harder pay attention to any of the other things, even though they may be important too.

We see this in product development too. When there is a burning bug, all effort goes to fixing that and getting the service back up and running, and all other backlog items are put on hold.

Only when we are healthy - physically, mentally, financially - can we start wanting and prioritising other things. 

This is just a different way of looking at Maslow's hierarchy. 

But, nonetheless, I fount it an interesting perspective to have.

This is also the case for universal basic income and safety nets that most western governments provide to their citizens.