Opportunities created by the Corona Crisis
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Many of us have never experienced a situation, which has affected our life to a similar extent as the current outbreak of COVID-19. This article is the result of a brainstorming about how we could leverage a positive impact despite the crisis.
Don’t get me wrong after reading the heading for this post: Not only the life, but also the economic safety of many people is under a serious threat right now. Drastic measures try to keep the spread of the virus under control.
The ultimate objective of these measures is to “flatten the curve” of infected people in order not to overburden our healthcare systems and to facilitate the medical support of the high-risk group. First of all, you should try to support this objective by practicing social distancing.
Do you want to know more about why social distancing is currently needed? I appreciated this article by Tomas Pueyo. There are new research results, numbers, derivated conclusions and measures coming in on a daily basis, but this article gives a good overall explanation of what is happening and why we need to act.
Encountering empty central squares is not only a question of early mornings anymore. Illustrative image from the Plaza de Armas, Cusco
Despite all the restrictions we’re experiencing and the uncertainty how long the situation is going to last, opportunities exist in this situation. As we need to execute major changes in our daily life already, we could also use this momentum to drive other changes. This counts similarly for individuals as for societies, for changes we have been wanting to do for a while and those that have an unknown potential for a positive impact in the future.
During the last weeks, I had quite a few thoughts about what we could learn from this crisis and how we want life to be after this crisis. These are all personal ideas, which I currently believe, could be possible and improve our future lives.
So feel free to let me know what you think about them. In case you have arguments for why an idea is not executable or why it cannot deliver a sustainable positive impact, please tell me in the comment section. These are rather optimistic ideas and dreams than a fact-based game plan.
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Why can we interpret the crisis as an opportunity?
Why can we interpret the crisis as an opportunity?
Most of the current measures are restricted for a few weeks. However, some experts argue that lockdowns or similar measures can significantly reduce the number of new infections, but that infection rates will explode again after loosening restrictions.
A proper control of the outbreak will therefore only be possible by long-term measures. These could last until a vaccination exists or the majority of the population is immune. This could mean more than a year of restrictions, as vaccinations are “likely to be 12-18 months away” (weforum.org).
In his second article on the topic, Thomas Pueyo explains quite well that the end of the "hammer” (the lockdown) is going to be followed by a longer “dance”. During this dance, societies could go back closer to normal life while keeping up restrictions with rather small impacts on the economy and society as a whole.
Such measures may be, but are not limited to, the ban of large gatherings, travel restrictions, working from home if possible and other social distancing measures. Meanwhile, aggressive early testing and isolating affected people needs to be adapted or continued.
Hence, we won’t go back to the normal life “from before corona” as quickly. If we’re lucky, the hammer will work well in most countries. Otherwise, it needs to be stricter and continue for a longer period than previously planned. The dance will then continue until the whole population is vaccinated - maybe in about a year or more from now.
Despite hopefully moving closer to normal in a couple weeks, our life will certainly differ from what we’re used to. Some people and articles are already talking about irreversible changes and the world after corona (e.g., MIT, The New York Times).
Stadiums will probably remain close for some more time. Photo by Marvin Ronsdorf on Unsplash
So much about the possible timeframe of the situation. Important for my article is the following sentence: “The longer it lasts, the bigger is going to be the impact we experience and the larger is also the chance we can drive a major change.”
You probably understand the first part, but might wonder why a longer lasting crisis is helpful for a change.
Well, humans are generally lazy and unwilling to change. It usually takes a crisis or a moment in which we get hurt in order to properly realize that we’re actually doing something wrong. After seeing the mistake we can then learn from it to do it better in the future. And there is a lot happening right now what we should improve going forward.
We already experience that things aren’t working as well as they should, e.g. small companies and poor people suffering first. At the same time we’re appreciating something that wouldn’t happen without the corona crisis, e.g. a significant reduction in CO2-emissions.
Additionally, change is easier once you started it. For example, most of us need to adapt to a more or less new living style at the moment. Personally, I need to apply new strategies in order to keep myself healthy and happy in the home office. As I’m thinking about what I need to change anyways, I can also integrate changes in my new daily routine, which I have been wanting to do for a while. Therefore, I believe that we can leverage this process of change to integrate better habits and ideas in our daily lives as individuals, as well as driving changes in our societies.
When we look down on our current situation, what strikes us and what would we like to be different?
Once the crisis is under control and restrictions are released for good, some parts of our society will need to do a restart. Instead of copying the status from before the crisis, we could improve certain approaches, eliminate some that have led us to more problems and try new ideas that promise a positive impact. Not only could we follow this idea as individuals, but also as societies in form of companies, states and maybe even the worldwide population including topics like the economic system and the current style of politics.
This is the chance to gather ideas, learn from the past and use the new start for a significant improvement. We should all seize this opportunity for our personal lives.
In addition, we could gather thoughts and ideas about what we would like to be better in the world after corona. This goes out especially to the people that are currently facing a little boredom due to being locked in and maybe not being able to study or work.
Let us observe and reflect, think and brainstorm - even the unconventional ideas. I would really like to see some motivated leaders and groups emerge from the current crisis with a sanity-checked and realizable idea, along with a well-developed plan how to execute it.
In the following sections, I am describing some of the ideas that have come to my mind during the last weeks. Maybe they can widen your horizon or inspire you to drive a positive and sustainable change - for yourself or even for all of us :-)
What does your dream look like? Is it possible to use the crisis to move closer to it? Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash
Ideas for our societies
First, I would like to introduce some rather obvious ideas for learnings we can take away from this crisis. Later, I will move on to possibly less common thoughts. I prefer not to go in-depth at any of the points, but only illustrate the learnings and ideas on my mind. Maybe they’re new to you, lead you to think and discuss about them or even inspire you to engage yourself for them.
Blue skies in China, less planes in the air and less cars on the road. Reduced carbon dioxide emissions is the first positive effect by the measures to tackle the corona crisis that I noticed. China’s industry didn’t stay idle for a long time since the infection rate is under control. Nonetheless, I could imagine overall lower CO2-emissions after the restrictions than before. Specifically, I am hoping that people will appreciate walking and cycling more in the future while flying less.
Meanwhile, usually busy areas are also less frequented or completely locked. This counts especially for tourist attractions where the lack of tourists lead to less pollution by transportation. Venice is a great example to see the difference as this video demonstrates. The canals became surprisingly clear since no more tourists are coming to the city.
Clear blue skies are not so common in some regions of China. Check out this video to see the impact the lockdown made on the air pollution. Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
Remote work could also be a good start to reducing flights. At the moment, companies are strongly encouraged to send all their workers to work from home if possible. If companies manage to discover and introduce good best practices, remote work will continue in some cases.
Meanwhile, we’re noticing that some under-appreciated jobs are actually system-relevant. People working in the healthcare-sector and grocery stores are fighting at the front of the common war against the virus and the panicking population.
I’m sincerely hoping that they will still be more appreciated after the crisis. Better working conditions with sufficient gear and protective equipment, adequate staffing instead of cost-saving strategies and overall better working conditions would be a great start. Many of these people would also be happy about a higher gratification in terms of salary, though. This would also lead to more people being willing to do these important jobs.
A thank you from the chancellor, clapping from windows or building a stature are nice, but not enough. Especially nurses should have better working conditions. Photo by Graham Ruttan on Unsplash
Those of you, who are not working in a system-relevant job, are likely to already work from home. As restaurants have already closed, or will do so eventually, homemade cooking is a good way to nurture ourselves again.
At the same time, the distribution of goods all over the world is affected by states closing boarders and people being afraid of receiving packages from more affected areas. This could be a good start for many people to use more local and seasonal ingredients. It also helps to reduce our carbon footprints.
While we cannot go to our favorite stores, gyms, dancing-classed, cafes, restaurants, etc. anymore, the owners and employees face a particularly difficult situation as they’re running out of money.
Maybe just now, you notice which places you appreciate, as you cannot go there anymore. Which corner-cafe or neighborhood-store would you like to survive?
Some governments are already leveraging state aids to support these businesses. As consumers, we can try to help our favorite places, too though. Crowdfunding campaigns, newly created web shops, delivery services and online-courses are common measures these businesses take to survive.
If you want your favorite places to survive the crisis, maybe you should support them now. Additionally, you could apply your awareness of your favorite places and go there more often in the future instead of ordering at amazon for example.
What is your favorite restaurant or neighborhood cafe? Will it survive the crisis? Is there something you could, e.g. ordering or buying vouchers so that is has a better chance to survice? Photo by Steven Skerritt on Unsplash
Now I would like to move on to more abstract ideas. Ideas, that are maybe not even executable at all. They are between very optimistic and utopian, but small steps in the right direction make a difference, too. Topic wise, I would like to see the states and the economy to focus more on encouraging social support, health and generally happiness.
Italian sociologists try to spread optimism that collective suffering in a challenging period is usually followed by a period with an overhaul of social excitement, gratefulness and inspiration to start new things (German article). This phenomenon can commonly be experienced after natural disasters or wars like the rebuilding scenario after World War II.
I am really looking forward to the time when “corona is over” and hope that we can leverage this excitement and zest for action to approach some major problems in this world, maybe including the following ideas:
First of all, I would like to see more solidarity also between countries. As the current pandemic shows, we are so interconnected and interdependent due to the globalisation that a single state cannot control such a crisis by itself.
Therefore, we need to learn that we need to work together globally. This includes both the people and definitely the countries. Every country doing their own thing does make it very difficult to handle such a huge problem that affects us all.
Unfortunately, the crisis has shown that even existing unions do not properly work together yet. For example, all the countries in the European Union try and apply their own concepts to get the virus under control and barely open up to help each other.
We can still improve during the crisis, though. Most likely, the whole world will soon be affected and as long as even a single state is not able to get the virus under control, all the other states are still at risk. I believe that all countries need to cooperate more.
By doing so, maybe we even notice that we are not so different after all. Instead of working against each other, we could cooperate more in other fields, too. My hope is that we can use this crisis to establish a better sense of community all around the work and start cooperating more on the problems we have in common.
Currently, many countries are pretty much printing money to support the economy and save businesses and private persons from reaching insolvency. For me, these actions encourage my wish of an economy that is more positive-impact-focused than revenue- and growth-focused.
As someone who did not study business, I like to dream of an economic system that reduces the gap between the poor and the rich, is based more on the resources we actually have in this world and is ultimately connected to the creation of overall happiness.
I know it sounds crazy, but I guess that now is a good moment to think about new ideas. After all, the current economic system once again shows that it doesn’t work well in all conditions and certainly has some disadvantages.
However, this is a huge question, which we probably cannot solve during the next years. At least until someone shows that a different system could work better for everybody, considering all possible problems.
In the meantime, we could do minor changes to improve the current system. Personally, I really like the idea of an unconditional basic income that could be driven by the improvements in automatization and digitalization.
Obviously, these are some ideas of what a dream world could look like. My wish is that they are possible without any major negative consequences, but I well know that my knowledge is limited.
Hence, I would both like to hear your arguments and opinions of why you believe these ideas to be feasible after all or why they cannot be executed. This post is a base for discussion and not a fixed concept. The objective is solely to make you reflect about our current society and economy and how we may improve it.
Is it possible that money itself is not the primary objective of our economic efforts, but just a medium of exchange and control? Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
One last opportunity created by the crisis that comes to my mind, is basically to learn how to handle such a crisis. Specifically, I am thinking about how to address people in order to make them do the right thing even though it’s uncomfortable, e.g. telling people to stay home or that they shouldn’t hamster (stockpile extraordinary amounts of food).
I believe that we can achieve valuable learnings about the general behaviour of people in a crisis and leverage these learnings in other situations, too. A question that has been on my mind for a while is how to teach people thoughtfulness, wisdom, solidarity and sustainability. If we could learn more about this fro, the ongoing crisis, we could make a huge step forward with our society as a whole.
Do we properly leverage this crisis to become wiser? Or are we missing some learnings? Photo by Faye Cornish on Unsplash
Ideas for us as individuals
Many people have more free time at home during the current situation. This can certainly be boring and sad. Personally, I have also felt a bit lost and depressed when I noticed that all my plans for the upcoming weeks are cancelled.
But then I noticed that being sad is less fun than actually using the “extra-time” I just received. It’s a good time to reflect about life and what I can improve now, appreciate what I used to have and still have, to focus on other hobbies or start a new one in the meantime, and to start projects I have been wanting to do for a long time.
This is a list of ideas of how you can use your individual extra-time as an opportunity for your own life. These ideas should not only help you during the crisis, but also as a long-term investment in form of lessons learned .
Focus on a good maintenance: Healthy food, sports and other habits
Staying at home while restaurants are closed, is definitely the right moment to improve your cooking skills. Whatever you’re learning now, it can help you in the future. Whether you want to focus more on a healthy diet, use local and seasonal ingredients, learn how to cook your favorite dishes yourself or just try something crazy - just do it.
There are countless resources and recipes available on the internet. It just needs you to convert your time and energy into a delicious meal - or your journey towards it. Don’t worry about messing it up the first time as you have enough chances to improve it.
You could also realize your mostly used ingredients and start storing them in a reasonable amount at home. Just enough to cook your favorite meal without having to go to three stores, cook something spontaneously or maybe to allow you surviving on your stocks for up to one week. I only have time to go shopping once per week, so I’m buying groceries for the upcoming week.
You should not hamster more food than for a week, though. The only thing it does, is making other people do the same thing, until we have less products available at the supermarkets during the short period in which people buy irrationally much. As the supply is secured, there is enough for everybody in the long-term.
Which dish have you been wanting to try cooking for a while now? Give it a shot. Illustrative image of Pad Thai - one of my personal favorites
Staying active and fit while being at home is not easy. But you can both learn how to motivate yourself to go for a run alone and how to work out, do yoga or do other exercises by yourself at home. Many apps actually offer free trials to start individual sports at home right now, e.g. downdog for yoga. And the best thing is: Once you have learned how to do sports at home, it will be much easier to stay fit in the future.
Life can feel especially challenging right now, there are many changes going on and the future is unsure. This can easily make people feel overwhelmed or even panic. Reflection, journaling and being mindful are just a few strategies that can help coping with the situation.
Moreover, these strategies have the potential to significantly improve your life in the long-term. Knowing what you actually need and want, processing your thoughts and feelings about the new situation and appreciating the moment are powerful skills. And your extra-time gives you a perfect chance to try them out now. If you need some motivation for starting a journal, I can suggest you an interesting blog post about the benefits of journaling.
Yoga with a view is nice, but you can reproduce this feeling with the right images and soundtrack in your home, too
Everybody is currently encouraged to apply hygiene standards to reduce the risk of infecting oneself or others. Most of these are not new and should be remembered even for a time after the crisis, too. Coughing in a tissue or the elbow, washing hands and keeping at distance to a sick person or when sick should be common sense. Please continue with them.
Similarly, you could apply the situation as an incentive to improve the cleaning standards of your flat or house. I’m not recommending obsessive cleaning habits in the long-term, but slight improvements that some households could certainly need.
While giving a clean home a higher priority you may also notice that there are many things at home you don’t need. What about using a day off for sorting out the things you haven’t used in years? A bit of minimalism not only keeps the flat tidier, but also helps focus more on the important things in the presence.
Appreciation
I highly encourage you to actively appreciate the positive aspects of your home, including your family or roommates. It will make being stuck at home feeling less annoying and reduce potential conflicts. You can do this by paying more attention to positive aspects like the sun coming through your window, your roommate cooking for you or simply laughing about a joke together.
In case you notice many problems in the coexistence with your roommates, partner or family, actively addressing these points may help. Plan a meeting, if necessary regularly, in which everyone addresses their personal pain points and what is important to them. Together, you should look for compromises that address everyone’s needs.
This may neither be easy nor working successfully straight away, but rather is an iterative process as new problems occur and desires change. Similarly to the active appreciation, planning and improving how you live together is a strategy you can generally leverage in the future, too.
COVID-19 poses a serious threat to certain groups of people - the high-risk-group. Now is not only the time to protect and support these persons, but also to appreciate the time we have with them. We all hope that they will still stay with us for a longer time, but it’s better to call them now and let them know we love them. Probably, they will appreciate more calls now and in the future.
Another group of people that you maybe even surprisingly miss now, could be your colleagues from work. For the moment, it is best practice to regularly use video-calls and also do team-building events with video. As a learning for the future, you could complain less about having to go to the office, but to look forward to see your colleagues.
Tip: Use a gratitute journal to make you more aware of the things you appreciate. Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash
Doing and watching team sports, enjoying cultural events, having an active social life and traveling are activities that are not possible in the current situation. These pastimes and many other things we’re missing right now is something that we could learn to appreciate more after the crisis. We may realize that these things are not always given and available to everybody, and from now on consider them for what they actually are - a privilege.
Especially those of us that are living alone could experience a lack in an actually very important need: physical contact. Despite not being particularly popular in northern countries, physical contact is a basic need for humans. Thus, I have a simple appeal for when we don’t need to be scared about infections anymore: Let’s hug more :-)
Let’s use this crisis to learn who and what we appreciate right now and to continue showing this appreciation when we’re “back to normal”. Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
Solidarity: “Increase the physical distance, but reduce the social distance”
Not only do some of us experience a lack of physical contact right now, but also a lack of emotional contact and support. Everyone who is having more free time could use it to help neighbors and elderly people. Luckily, this kind of solidarity is rising during the crisis.
I read an interesting article (in German) about Italians, which describes that: “they are intolerably when everything is going well, but lovely in a crisis that affects everybody like now”. Let’s be like Italians in a crisis and support the people in need :-)
In addition to quarantined neighbors and elderly people, solidarity with everybody else that is suffering more in the current situation or generally having a more difficult life would be a good start. I heard people arguing that not more people express solidarity in these times, but that it’s rather the same people expressing more.
Nonetheless, I still prefer to be optimistic and believe that also more people will start showing solidarity and continue to do so after we go back to a normal life. If we cannot believe in it, how could we make it happen?
Institutions like the Studentersamfundet in Trondheim are based on voluntary work. By increasing solidarity in our population more such institutions will be created and strengthened. If you’re interested why I have such a high opinion on voluntary organizations, check out this article
New learnings or hobbies
I’m pretty sure that most of us have ideas or specific projects that we have been wanting to start for a while. Some of us want to learn a new language, others want to work in the garden, read one specific book or several ones, start a blog, learn photography, paint, cook something new, learn how to code, discover the neighborhood by walking or cycling (if allowed) or any other thing.
It really doesn’t matter what you want to do, as long as you can do it at home (or in some countries by yourself outside), now is the time to start one or several of these projects.
You can spend more time with an existing hobby or start a whole new one. Maybe you just start something you only want to continue with during the restrictions. Or maybe you end up liking it so much that it turns into your new favorite hobby. The only important thing is to seize the current chance and start now.
Don’t worry so much about what could be your new favorite thing to do. Just start something new. Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash
Another thing many people could focus more on or simply start with, is philosophizing about our society, what the current problems are and how we could make it better. As written in the section above, you could gather ideas on what you would like to be better in the world and how we can facilitate this improvement at the end of the crisis.
Especially students, who may be a little bit bored right now, could focus on this task and bring in fresh ideas. Maybe someone could even start a brainstorming platform or similar where ideas are gathered and evaluated. Anyone should be able to participate and bring in their ideas. The best ones are then further developed. What do you think?
Do you have any other ideas how individuals could learn from the crisis and make an improvement in the future? Share them with me and other readers in the comment section.
Some strategies for coping with the situation
I would like to share my personal strategies for coping with the current situation. Surely, most of you have already developed strategies yourself or found helpful ones on different channels, but maybe an idea or two is new for you.
As we should not go out and meet our friends in groups now, it is necessary to socialize differently.
I was never the person that likes to call a lot, but I noticed that it feels better to hear or even see a friend instead of just reading his or her messages. Hence, it could be a good option to just call or video-call your friends and family. Most likely, they will be happy - even about a spontaneous call. Feel free to call me, too, but on the weekends please ;-)
I always liked to try out new things and discover new places. Being supposed to stay at home I felt like there won’t be happening anything exciting in my private life anymore. It took me a while to think of other aspects to keep my life exciting.
By now, I like to walk or cycle to a new place every weekend or cook something I have never cooked before. Maybe you need to take a closer look or think a bit longer, but I’m sure that there are opportunities available to you where you can discover something new despite the current situation.
A simple way to help discovering new places or encountering details is taking your camera or phone when going for a walk. Be more aware of your surroundings and stay alert for interesting scenes. This actually goes both ways. By walking outside and being aware of your surroundings you can improve your look for frames and objects that you could photograph. Similarly, knowing how to assemble and frame photos will help you be more aware of your surroundings.
Hence, this is also the right time to start with photography. There are countless resources available online to teach you the basics. Once you learned a little bit about the composition of photos, the world will look different through your eyes.
Learn to pay attention to the details and focus on the positive aspects of live (and the corona crisis) :-)
In order to stay happy at home, a large factor for me is to stay healthy and in a tidy environment. Therefore, I try to focus more on my strategies for a good maintenance: Healthy food, regular and varied exercies, meditation and journaling, some fresh air, keeping up a good connection to my colleagues, having a well-working coexistence with my roommates and a clean and tidy flat.
The longer the restrictions are going to last, the more likely it will be that we feel sad and in other forms negatively emotionally affected by them. In order to postpone this bad mood as much as possible, I believe that celebrating what we’re currently happy about could help out a lot. Hence, I will try to celebrate the aspects of my life that I’m happy about more.
In addition to noting the three things I appreciated most about the day in my journal, I also plan to overly enjoy fun moments with my roommates and share more on instagram. Honestly, the act of sharing makes me feel happier and prouder. I hope you don’t mind seeing more pictures of my food and encourage you to do the same. Let’s share what makes us happy and maybe we can inspire each other :-)
Follow me on instagram for cooking inspiration from the homeoffice: nikilax_hb. Illustrative picture of “arroz con coco y camarones” (coconut rice with prawns)
Conclusion
The extraordinary situation during the corona crisis has led to significant changes in most of our lives. As we already need to change, we may also reflect about the current situation in our society and imply other changes that help our society on the long run. For example, we could continue with positive side effects of the crisis like less flights and more solidarity.
As individuals, we should similarly seize the chance to reflect upon and improve our personal lives, establish new good habits, learn to appreciate more and use our time at home for the projects that we wanted to start for a while.