Staying Grateful and Productive During a Pandemic
This is an accompanying article related to a recent collaboration between Deeptech and Compfest available below,
The world is swooped over by a global pandemic that is now disrupting every aspect of our life. Coronavirus is a catalyst that suddenly changed the face of the world that we once know.
People lost their beloved ones, they lost their job, some had to make hard decisions to close their business — everything is hard during this situation.
We hear news about cases kept increasing, followed by deaths; along with misinformation that spreads around the internet. It seems that a shroud of dark clouds suddenly engulfed us and all we see is a dark future.
But focusing on the darkness would lead us to nothing, we can instead choose to see a bit of light that pierced the dark clouds and stay positive during these hard times.
I’m a software engineer, I work with technology and anything that I wrote here is based on my experience. I will try not to speak for others, especially occupancies and industries that I have very little knowledge about.
Life Before Pandemic
Before we dive into the issues that we are having right now, let’s take a step back and see how was life before the pandemic hits.
I have been working as a software engineer for 6 years. As a software engineer, I get to do work only with a single piece of equipment, a computer. While a computer itself is enough to get most of my job done, the internet makes it a lot powerful by allowing collaboration with my co-worker and obtaining information that I needed.
I was lucky enough to be able to work remotely for 2 years, then semi-remotely with a company that provides 3 days on-site, and 2 days at home. Before the pandemic hits, I am fully remote at Clearview.
Working in a remote-first company that is globally distributed around the world, I get to choose my work hours so that I could overlap with my coworker for some discussion. Most of our communications are done asynchronously, with an exception of urgent issues or a weekly sync up to get everyone on the same page.
This also means I get to choose where to work. I usually spent most of my working hours at the coffee shop, interacting with others, and enjoying foods; it was great!
The Pandemic
But then Coronavirus happened, suddenly every company that could have their employee works from home with a computer decided that remote is the way forward.
Despite the terms work-from-home and the chance to work from anywhere I want, I enjoyed working from a coffee shop. This creates a separation of context between my daily life at home, and work at the coffee shop.
Once the pandemic arrived, no more restaurants accepted dine-in, some of them closed their business because it is no longer viable for them to keep opening while getting no customer.
I have to work from home, and I lost the separation of context that I created by working and living at a different place. Suddenly, work and life look very blurry and the balance started to tip.
While the work is mostly the same, the environment where you work affects you greatly. Disturbance coming from family members that are also working from home now started to affect us.
When Tech Ceases To Exist
What if suddenly, tech ceases to exist during the pandemic? Very simple, with the same expertise that I had now. I’d have no job, there are no needs for software, and there is no internet to connect us.
I would have to start learning another expertise that can be done during a pandemic. I might as well be a doctor and work on a vaccine.
Without the internet, the information would be slow to spread — this means hoaxes would not be as easily viral as it is now; but it also means valid information would be slow to spread too.
The health officials would be having a hard time spreading the news and advice around the world. Suddenly, developing a vaccine is a lot harder because the information that can be shared by the scientist is limited and spread slowly.
Verification of misinformation would also be hard to do, this means that anyone could say anything about something, and no one can disprove it immediately because clarifying it would be a lot of work to do.
Economic Crisis
There would always be a crisis during a disaster, especially a global one like Coronavirus. Especially when our life is so attached to technologies now, suddenly losing them would be a major crisis.
What would happen if suddenly airplane control stopped, a nuclear cooling system failed, and a metro system went off.
Humans already faced a pandemic before, and the economic crisis happened. Now we have technology that might be enough to help us get through the pandemic and avoid crisis as long as our work can be done while maintaining the spread of the virus.
There are about 23 million software developers alone in this world if there are no tech that supports collaborative development; 23 million people would not be able to work, and that alone would result in a major crisis. Add that with the number of bank administrators and government officials that require the internet and collaborative works. Suddenly the crisis seemed real.
Remote Tech
Fortunately, that didn’t happen and we have amazing technologies around us now that supported collaborative working through the internet.
The most important technology during the situation is communication technology. Works that require active collaboration on-site, would require active collaboration remotely; and without communication, it won’t be possible to collaborate.
However, instead of focusing on the tools. We should focus on the goals.
Do we want to meet virtually? We can use Zoom or Google Meet.
Do we want to collaboratively write docs? We can use Dropbox Paper, Office 365, or Google Docs.
Do we need to share files? We can use Onedrive or Google Drive.
Some of us forgot that tech exists to support our goal, not the other way around. Without carefully choosing what tools to use, the tech would be a burden instead of an advantage.
The most productive work you can do is maximizing the goals achieved, not the tools used. If the amount of tech you need to use to achieve the goals is minimal, that would reduce the overhead of operating the tech and the cost to do so.
Some tools, when used improperly, would impair productivity instead of increasing them.
Say Slack, for example, I always have notifications muted unless it is a direct mention, there’s a specific keyword being mentioned, or a specific channel that I need to have eyes at. Having too many notifications would disturb your focus, and instead of getting the work done, you’d be busy with handling notifications.
Also when we treat remote work as synchronous work, things would start to fall apart. When you are constantly required to communicate while doing work, it also disturbs your focus at the current work, in the meantime the communication that you do would probably be ineffective and you’d forget it anytime soon.
Procrastination
How do we handle procrastination? Say we had all of the tools that we needed to finish work, but somehow our brain decided to “let’s do it in a couple of minutes” — when this happens, our brain is piling up a debt of things that needed to be done, when it reaches a certain number- we suddenly feel like we can’t concentrate because our brain is filled with the debt of things that needed to be done, in the end — we decided to not do anything.
Procrastination is not a problem with our time management, it is a problem with our emotions. When we get overwhelmed with work and debt, our brain can not concentrate. We emotionally felt confused and tired, thus we delay more work.
To beat procrastination, we need to solve the debt first — or any emotional matters that we currently have.
Or, we can do an anti-procrastination method. Instead of saying “I’ll do it in a couple of minutes” — say “I’ll just do it for a minute and see if I want to continue”. Most of the time, your brain would fell into a flow of focus that you ended up doing the work.
Wrapping It Up
Staying grateful and think positively during a pandemic would significantly improve how we act and view the situation.
When we are doing something, focus on the goals not the tools. Cutting out unnecessary tools might save us some resources and time.
Deal with procrastination as an emotional issue, not a time-management one. Deal with the issue to helps the brain focus on the goals.
I hope it helps and as always, accepts feedback.