This sucks. I’m not going to sugar coat it. A lot of people are suffering and those who aren’t suffering are either bored or stressed. I’m very fortunate to be bored and I am grateful that I can spend my time thinking. Most people right now don’t have that luxury.

If you are suffering through either the anxiety of losing a loved one or worried about putting food on the table, this article won’t help. This article is for the person still getting paid but having their work drastically reduced and whining about missing the experience not eating at a new restaurant.

So basically, me.

Anyways, I wanted to share a few mindset tips and tactics that might help you realize that this time is the perfect time to sit down and think. The world is full of ebbs and flows. It’s a dynamic system that has its upsides and downsides. Right now, we’re in a downside but there are a ton of success stories of people who have done amazing things when the world was turned upside down.

Mindset

First and foremost, it’s perfectly fine to not do anything right now. There are a lot of articles online that say “DO SOMETHING, YOU’RE WASTING TIME”. If need be, spend time grieving and understanding what’s going on in the world right now. Try not to obsessively read the news or go on twitter, or pay attention to the stock market like I’ve been doing.

So for me, I’ve spent a lot of time reading what’s trending on twitter, or looking at the growth curve for coronavirus, or playing too many video games. My sleep schedule is on the frits and I hate it. I’m not perfect, but I embrace it.

When you’re ready, you will be productive but don’t guilt yourself to be productive.

This has happened before

Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss recently had an episode that put a few things into perspective. Pandemics and sheltering in place is nothing new. It’s happened before. Of course, this time is a little different, but it’s happened before.

Two extreme examples of this are William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton. Shakespeare wrote King Lear while in Quarantine and Newton discovered Calculus.

Compare this to the black plague or the Spanish flu. The black plague was so viciously bad because people didn’t believe microbes exist and the Spanish flu was apparently pretty bad because it wasn’t communicated well.

The silver lining to all of this is that because this is a global situation, it’s been communicated as a global situation. The science of how to prevent this from getting worse has been on the forefront. People wear face masks and wash their hands because they read the science of how viruses spread and they are physically distancing themselves because we are now convinced that we can flatten the curve.

We’ve learned a lot from each pandemic and I am sure things will change drastically as we get out of this one.

Now with the leveraging of technology, we can adapt faster and faster.

The best time for a pandemic

Scott Galloway’s podcast puts this in a slightly different perspective. He also has a hip new podcast that I’ve been listening to. One story that Scott always pushes is that crises always end and then brings up a story about his great grandfather escaping a bunker in his home country and during that time seeing his would-be aunt get ran over by a tank.

This is not the worst thing that could happen if the best solution to save the world is to stay inside and not go out.

The best part about being human is that we adapt and some even try to make things better. We’ve already seen massive improvements in audio quality, video quality, ecommerce capabilities, how we communicate online and physical distancing innovations.

Of course, growing under rapid change has its kinks and pitfalls, but I appreciate all of the new things going on right now.

Learn Something New

Right now is the perfect time to gain useful knowledge because people are leveraging the internet to share their knowledge. I’ve been doing it and it’s really fun. I’ve been in about 4 webinars a week and I learn something new each time. I also love to engage in either the speaker or the audience. I honestly think this is the best way to actually network in this day and age. It’s always surprising to me who doesn’t speak out in webinars because it’s so easy to be noticed when you do.

Tactics

I think it’s best to do all of these and do these in order, but it’s up to you.

Reflection

I had a group call and I saw my friend Brian Spears, CEO of New Age Meats on it. I asked him how the pandemic was going and he said it was a good time for reflection.

In the busy world we used to live in, we had trouble reflecting because that requires us to enter a calm state of mind, and rewatch the past and take notes. Now is the perfect time to do it.

Though there are many ways to “reflect”, I’ll just tell you what works for me. I take a current point of time, think about it, then gather data from other like-minded or far-minded individuals. I see how they’re coping with what’s happening and then try and imitate it through their point of view.

Probably the best way is to write it down in some fashion. I’m not good at systematically writing things down on a notebook. But I found writing and publishing blog posts to be my form of reflection. Different people have different ways of reflecting events. I find giving bad advice to me, my way of doing so, but try other ways. Perhaps through poetry, or fiction, or visual art. Anything that allows you to mold a story into something someone can understand helps you digest the trauma better.

One of the most interesting tactics I’ve heard (from Ryan Holiday and Tim Ferriss) is a discussion on how can you frame the time in isolation as unwasted time? They essentially said, “how can I make this self-isolation period something I won’t regret?” or “How can I make it the best time in my life?”

Overall, this is to prevent you from sinking further down a pit of sorrow or anger. It’s a lifeline that might lead to great actualization.

Empathy

What is bad and great about this time is that this is probably an event where everyone feels marginally the same way. Therefore, it’s a bit easier to empathize with people and even animals.

Unless you know a psychopath who does not have a shread of human empathy, I have not seen anyone personally that has loved the pandemic and hasn’t suffered in some way. Everyone is suffering in some way. Sure, someone is doing better than you, but there are millions who are doing a lot worse.

If you run a business, the lack of empathy can ruin things and the overemphasis of empathy can help you get long-lasting fans.

The numbers say that consumers are more than ever, switching brands. Brand loyalty is shaky now. There are many reasons for this. Pricing (ie, I have to buy this $1 dollar mustard and not this $5 mustard), availability (toilet paper, for example), but I do think there’s an opportunity to win people over via empathy. Having your brand focus on empathy imprints on the consumer that you’re here to help them in a difficult time. From donating to hospitals to hosting cooking classes, this shows that your brand is taking action. This doesn’t have to be a company, every individual has the power to step up and make everyone’s life a little easier.

By the way, for examples of tangible tactics to show your empathy, I wrote an article last week about the topic.

If you don’t have the resources or capital to make an empathetic campaign, the easiest thing you can do is to acknowledge with a full heart that you’re here for them. Sometimes it can miss the mark. I find people who are selling me stuff and tacking on “I hope you’re safe out there” to be distasteful and I’m not a fan of business friends asking me how I am out of the blue. But I’m really weird and have trust issues.

Action

If you have the time, energy, resources and mission, now is the perfect time to take action. What is great about this time is that people are trying new things and now is the perfect time to test out your bootstrapping abilities and try new things as well.

For me, I’ve been pumping out podcasts that allow other people to share their perspectives on the pandemic. It eases me, and a lot of people are finding value from it.

I’ve also been diving into webinars. WeWork Labs is trying to test out a bunch of digital things and I jumped on board and just asked my friends if they would be happy to do a webinar. Not only that, but I’ve been testing out doing webinars with just me helping formulators out. I found these to be a super valuable way of giving back. The webinar host and the audience find the value tremendous and it solidifies the relationship. They are also really easy to do.

(Unfortunately, these are slowing down because Zoom, legal stuff, etc.)

But the new skillset also allows me to explore what I could potentially do with improving My Food Job Rocks and I feel like I’m learning something valuable that can be used in the future.

It doesn’t have to be a huge change or a huge initiative to take action. It can just be changing something you’re good at into something digital. Are you good at networking? Start a Zoom happy hour or start a podcast. If you’re good at researching, now is the perfect time to research articles or even reach out to talk to people about specific formulation problems. If you have kids, then they’re probably at home. It’s the perfect time to find ways to make your child’s life the best it can be.

To bring it home, I’ve been doing a lot of reflection, empathizing, and actionable steps and came to some pretty big conclusions with some pretty big changes.

Speaking of big changes, big change in my life soon. Talk to me if you’re interested but if not, I’ll talk about it next month.