Photo courtesy of Museums Victoria
In a personal attempt to try to understand and process what the fuck is going on right now, here are some things I'm learning during this crisis. Some things I already knew, but the lens of a pandemic puts it into focus.
When our ability to predict the future diminishes, it's hard to get and give good advice
Unemployment is at a record high. Economists, whose jobs are to predict where the economy is going, are mostly clueless about what the future holds. Can you imagine if you hired a plumber to come to your house and fix your sink, and they just looked at your sink and said, "I have no definitive solution to fix this, and I also can't tell you how soon it can be fixed." So he tries a bunch of shit and tells you that, "It'll probably work eventually. We have to wait and see." Yeah, that's where we are.
We do not have a 'best practices' for weathering a government-mandated economic shut down amid a global health crisis. In the blandest and best of times, financial experts and economists could make predictions because the world looked how the world usually looked - normal, with normal data and normal downturns. Now that it's not normal, we're seeing the limits of what financial experts and economists know.
We are in uncharted limbo. And as a result, the majority of the financial advice has become meaningless or at best, not that helpful right now because it was dependent on a functioning economy, not a frozen one. The advice usually given was also based on the predictability of normal circumstances. We don't even have all the basic guidelines for how some of these new programs will be executed. And more relief bills may be written.
We're looking at an incomplete picture getting painted before our eyes. The particularly useful, good financial advice for something like this is all about preemptively taking precautions. Unfortunately, the majority of preparation for financial emergencies (saving money and getting insurance) can't be executed during an emergency.
The list of the things that you can do now is a short one. Here it is:
Cut spending and embrace frugality because we aren't sure how long this will last and how big of an economic impact it will have.
Strategically and intelligently defer outstanding debts or payables (loans, credit card payments, etc.)
In terms of investments, sit tight and don't panic.
Get informed and stay informed about relief options (government and otherwise). For small business owners or self-employed people navigating the new laws, lean on your accountant and small business attorney for guidance and try to get information directly from the source (the IRS, SBA, your state's employment department, etc.)
If you're unemployed, apply for unemployment
Be resourceful and creative; back-up plans, safety nets, and flexibility are as relevant today as it was this time last year and will be as important this time next year.
How you spend your days will determine how you perceive the world
Do you know that episode of Friends where Joey and Chandler get free porn? For those who haven't seen it, the premise is straightforward: Joey and Chandler turn on their TV one day and discover they have free porn. They recalled a friend who once was also the recipient of free porn, but he turned off the TV, and it disappeared. So they vowed never to turn it off.
After several days, Chandler complains to Joey that on a recent trip to the bank, the teller didn't invite him to go into the vault. And Joey said something similar happened to him when the pizza delivery guy didn't flirt by commenting about the apartment or the curtains. They both found the reality of their world to be way less exciting when they spent their days watching porn.
Even though it's a sitcom, it illustrates that how you spend your days will determine how you perceive the world. And for most of us, we have a choice in the matter. No matter what is happening in the world, you are in charge of how you feel. No one else is, except for people with chemical imbalances, of course.
So right now, if you're lucky enough to be at home, choose to structure your day so that you're doing everything you can to make your world feel how you want it to feel. Spend your day giving things your full attention so you can experience being fully in the moment. Being fully present is an excellent antidote for feeling anxious and stressed. Remember what having a structured day does. Structure offers support. Spend the day limiting the attention you give to the things that don't help you construct the kind of world you want to be experiencing.
When our world shrinks, we get to have a closer look at fewer things. We get the opportunity to choose what's important enough to keep demanding our attention and focus.
Don't underestimate what you don't know
I honestly did not know how to properly wash my hands until this crisis. That means, for 34 years, I haven't been washing my hands correctly. That means I've washed my hands incorrectly at least 25,000, if not multiples of that number. Thankfully, this skill was easy to learn and implement right away. Because the impact of underestimating what I didn't know could be life or death or varying degrees of illness.
Nearly ten million Americans have applied for Unemployment Benefits. I thought I knew how to understand the economy in terms of numbers like unemployment claims, but at this scale, I don't know what this means now or what the long-term implications are. We can't underestimate what we don't know and how big of an impact those gaps in knowledge can be. Maybe the world will be business as usual in six months, or perhaps a violent revolution will brew, and capitalism will never be the same. Let's never underestimate what we don't know because you don't even know some of the things you don't know.
Necessity is the mother of invention
War gave us women in the workforce, canned foods, plastic surgery, duck tape, microwaves, trench coats, blood banks, sanitary pads, kleenex, stainless steel, pilates, zippers, and wristwatches.
The Great Recession gave us a bunch of unprofitable shitty startups. But unprofitable, shitty startups took money from venture capitalists and redistributed some of that wealth in the form of subsidizing a bunch of shit. Remember movie pass? That company took money from venture capitalists, and that pass allowed a bunch of people to watch a crazy amount of movies basically for free. So if you had movie pass and used it and saved money, some wealthy venture capitalists paid for your movie tickets.
At the very least, on the other side of this, we'll have a vaccine and playbook.
Managing failures can be better than focusing on success
Framing things in terms of success or reaching our goals seems conditioned. Winners of games are called winners. They're not called "not-losers."
Instead of focusing on winning, we can contemplate ways to ensure we are a "not-loser." This inverse way of thinking can help us eventually succeed.
I've had hard conversations with people during the Great Recessionโsome involved debating whether or not people should consider walking away from their homes. So now, I look at things like buying a home in terms of ensuring you're a "not-loser."
It's easy to look at purchasing a home as a win, achieving a goal. A lot of goal-oriented people, go for the win and figure the rest out later. But if you think of making sure you are a "not-loser," you think in terms of risk, strategy, and probability (luck). Weigh all the ways owning a home can end up being a financial failure and solve for those problems.
I think this way about business. My marketing metrics only matter because they help me ensure that my business won't fail because I failed to market. Once I am a "not-loser" because of marketing, I find other ways I can fail and try to solve for those problems.
Once you start to solve for failures, success can become an eventuality. Success is then more of a byproduct of managing failures.
We're going to see a lot of people and businesses who succeed in this crisis because they spent time managing their failures. Even if they didn't see this exact scenario coming, they imagined one where their business got decimated because of a new law or a new technology or because they were too inefficient, and it was unsustainable. And they solved for possible failures. I think it goes without saying that I don't think failure is a bad thing. I find it to be a beneficial exercise and the fastest way to learn a lesson.