I remember flying to LAX on the morning of March 13th. The NBA had cancelled the remainder of the season 36 hours before I took off and the situation was starting to get serious. The feeling in my stomach was that I was shouldn’t be on the plane and for the next three hours, I planned my immediate trip home. That night I slept in my bed in Vancouver, started a 14-day quarantine, and so began the start of an evolutionary period of my life that frankly, I wasn’t ready for or welcoming.
Over the past weeks I’ve worked hard to understand feelings, where they’re coming from, and what they mean. I April I wrote my first 50 things piece and thought it would be a good idea to follow-up with what I’ve learned and observed this past month.
- Money isn’t in the bank until money is actually in the bank
- Home cooking is more healthy than eating at a restaurant. Usually
- The 7 stages of grief aren’t always experienced in order, nor just once
- My feelings are my feelings and while they’re easier to bury, acknowledging them and validating them has been the best way to understand them
- Talking to people helps
- A win is a win, no matter how big or small
- Sleep can be a productivity booster if it is used right
- Perspective matters. Location, age, sex, status, wealth, security, etc.
- There is always a big part of our day that we have complete control of regardless of what is happening outside of our control
- There is a risk spectrum that spans more broadly than I thought imaginable
- I have a new admiration and respect for essential workers
- ‘How are you?’ is one of the most underrated questions we can ask
- Listen, listen, listen, speak
- We can’t multitask
- My screen time usage chart oddly resembles the daily case count charts with an apex in late April
- I can’t pull off a moustache
- Park > TV
- Zoom doesn’t have to be the default communication tool
- A check-in doesn’t have to last an hour for people to know and feel you care about them and want to say hello
- Clear instructions and guidelines seem to have disappeared mid-March
- Innovation is either forced (COVID) or chosen (giving time and space to create)
- Force majeure?
- Incredible leaders have emerged in the past weeks. Thank them.
- Politicians have generally done an exceedingly good job
- We can’t predict the future but we have to plan for it anyway
- Was there ever a normal?
- Research will often say what you want it to say when you’re the one asking the questions
- Experimentation seems trivial but the art lies not in the plan, but the action
- Specialists seem to be doing better than generalists
- A change of scenery sure is nice, isn’t it?
- Innovation comes in many, many forms
- A clean anything (mind, office, house) is a great place to start
- ‘Who am I?’ might yield a different answer now than it did last year. That’s growth.
- In life, there is no finish line, no race, no winner, and our only competition is ourselves
- Measure lots of things, but only to learn, not necessarily to add pressure/expectations
- If something isn’t working, stop doing it and expecting a different result
- Leave technology in different rooms when possible
- Look people in the eyes when speaking to them, you’ll hear them more clearly and see what they don’t tell you
- Dropping off little gifts to friends is a day-maker for both us and them
- Ask different questions to get different answers
- Language is important. What people say isn’t always what they mean (or what you understand)
- Change is only scary until you accept it, then it can be empowering
- Explore new parts of your city/town. You’ll be surprised what you find
- Maybe, in a way, this is what we needed to get to where we wanted to go next, faster
- Help is always there. Use it.
- Play games
- Sing songs
- Laugh lots
- Cry if you need to
- Time goes one speed whether we like it or not and when we look back, it will have either flown by or crawled. Either way, there will be a time when we look back on this and there will be only a select few things we remember. Create those positive things to remember this time by and hang on to them tight.
