These are challenging times. Many of us, if not almost all of us, have been thrown out of the routines we have been used to. Some routines are connected exclusively to work (the 925, the flexi-time, freelance, interim, overtime, fulltime – you name it and it’s there – unless you happen to be unemployed or between jobs or looking for work, then time is defined differently – routines become different). Other routines are defined by free-time, leisure time, the weekend, holiday and sickness (off sick) – these times bring their own routines along and these too have been impacted by the current changed situation. We invented our routines and also had them thrust upon us. That invention of a matrix of routines has been disrupted. Virtually nothing remains as it was. Many of us being creatures of comfort, many of us not only moan about routines (the infamous ‘rut’) but to a degree embrace them and enjoy them. Those daily rituals that bring structure and order into our days, weeks and months. Many of those comforting rituals and zones have also been disrupted. We have been confronted by levels and degrees and types of change unprecedented on the current scale.
Few people have escaped this. Few places in the world have escaped this. The challenge to cope, the challenge to reinvent our day to day lives. For those with jobs some are able to create home-office / working from home scenarios. But clearly not everyone will be able to do this. They are at home not working and not unemployed. Then there are those unemployed who perhaps, in some ways, have less of a challenge. They didn’t go to work anyway. But it’s different for them too. No job interviews, the same restricted movement and the prospect of a compromised job market post Corona-Virus (a rapid increase in the number of businesses registering for bankruptcy).
Everyone with children at school now have their children at home. Everyone used to their time alone now has their time redefined by partners being at home together, every day and every week. These are challenging times. The necessity for reinvention, for readjustment, for new ways of working, new ways of being together (apart), shaping routines and living outside of comfort zones – I am excited and fascinated by how this is impacting people’s lives and what it means for a Post-Coronavirus time and world. Already, in this short space of time, environmental stats are showing signs that Mother Nature is benefiting. I am convinced that many people have entered a fruitful, both introspective but at the same retrospective / reflective state.
For me, it kicked off with toilet paper and pasta and quickly became entwined with many of the key forces and factors informing narratives in the corporate world as well as the non-corporate. Disruption has been a topic since Trump’s election (and predated his appearance on the world stage). Digitalization, mobility, new ways of working (and shaping work). Who can miss the flood, the explosion, the avalanche of business marketing tapping into, tuning into online offerings – digitally delivered online services have intensified, out of sheer necessity and opportunity. In the aftermath of the crisis, businesses will be taking a look at their sales and will be analyzing how necessary the face-2-face force’s size is, how vital are those face-2-face meetings and the amount of office space. Reinvention is the order of the day. Looking at how it was and how it is and how it will be (and how WE want it to be). The classic model employed in business, as well as in therapy, can now become common property and agent of change.
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