Lockdown 2 — the rematch
For a lot of middle-aged white-collar professionals it’s a tricky time. The past six months has seen us, if not thrive, than at least more than simply survive. And just as we were psyching ourselves up for a return to the office it has all changed again.
Remembering Lockdown
Everyone’s concept of the passage of time has of course changed over the past months. The truisms comparing a hour for an enamoured couple to a second for a condemn man have evolved into a far more prosaic view: a day of lock-down feels inversely proportionate to the number of square meters per person you have in your house!
For those of us with plenty of rooms, a nice view from the windows and a garden it was sometimes hard to see what the problem was aside from the eye-strain of eight hours of Zoom!
What did we lose? We lost our commutes, the constant parade of dull evening events, the bread-rolls at working lunches and too much wine, 9pm coffees, and frustrating mid-week handovers after ‘important’ Wednesday night dinners.
What did we gain? The possibility of start-of-the-day exercise without getting up at 5am; more insight into our children’s lives than we’d previously had; the opportunity of a lunchtime walk; and the possibility of processing email during dull presentations.
(Important note! As with everything I post I am taking a focused look at the world I know, and parking (momentarily) the broader canvas on which our lives play out. I am fully aware that I and my peer-group are massively fortunate compared to so many people losing their jobs, struggling with self-isolation in small homes, caught by Covid in the middle of a job change, or genuinely fearing the months ahead in a way that I can hardly imagine. That is a critical and important topic, but not the aim of this specific piece.)
What’s not to like?
The biggest ‘problem’ I’ve found talking to my peers and colleagues (and reflecting on my own feelings) is that all of the specific plans of what to do with the freed up commuting time, evenings empty of work obligations and weekends without sport, theatre or socialising failed to come to pass.
If we think about that rationally it’s not surprising. In almost all cases we ended up working more hours than we normally would — initially because of the post-lockdown chaos and inefficiency, and later simply because everyone else was, so waiting until 8:30 to log on or not taking calls after 6 seemed inappropriate even if we’d never have taken a Teams call on the train home in the evening.
Secondly of course, family-time takes time. Truly wonderful time in so many cases, but a minute is still a minute, an hour is still an hour. And of course one of the joys of being with people you care about is that you can spend that time just ‘being’, not doing. (Cue all the self-help talk about us being “human beings” not “human doings”). As such the tangible to-do list is not shortened even though your happiness and well-being are improved.
On the theme of exercise the usual hurdles simple take different forms. If you previously got up at 5am to go for a run or attend a gym session you typically got there without distraction. If you are rising later there is more likely to be someone who wants to chat over their breakfast or ask for help on the forgotten physics homework.
And that’s even before you get into practical blockers of to-do list progress such as the rubbish tip being closed or even Amazon being out of the equipment you needed for DIY.
Sure, there should be lots of activities that are perfectly suited to the situation — whether learning to meditate or setting up a fly-fishing blog. But just because no equipment is involved they still suffer from the above challenges. There are still 24 hours in the day, and hopefully sleeping a big portion of that is a to-do list item most people have managed.
As such, a lot of us got more worked done and had more quality family time but didn’t tick off much or anything for our bucket lists (either previous ones or lockdown specials). This got a lot of people down. I read a great article on Medium (though can’t find it now — will post link when I do) talking this through at a far more profound level. It explained very helpfully why posts such as “What did you unlock during lockdown” were causing real stress to those whose work had continued but who saw all the suffered of those losing jobs or being furloughed and so were hesitant to try and justify things.
The return-to-the-office?
While some companies made it clear mid-summer that there would be no return before 2021 many others saw that enough staff wanted to return and that the benefits of doing so were sizable. I’ll write separately on both the pros and cons of this, and the emotions of my first travel back — what’s relevant here is that my company was one that spent a lot of time and money creating a Covid-secure space (or as much as a shared space can be) and from early September we were ramping back up in London.
Then the second spike became obvious. (Lots could be said about the predictability of it and how the summer appears not to have been well used for preparation, but that’s not the point of these postings (and of course too many of us are too ready to jump to under-informed conclusions as we extrapolate off a few obvious errors. This is new! This is hard!))
And with the second spike came the encouragement for office works to remain at home. This is not full lockdown (yet) but most offices have now reclosed or remained open only for essential staff (or those whose well-bring might suffer if they have to work 100% from home again)
So back to WFH and 8 hours a day of VCs
Thus round 2 begins….
Those who expected a winter of WFH might not have liked it but would have already internalised it. Those of us who thought — in a somewhat different way — we were ‘back at work’ may be finding the return to 100% home working a little more bothersome.
Sure, we’re ‘better’ at it now than we were in April, but the novelty and effort has worn off and it is clear where mental fatigue is starting to impact the quality of interaction, problem solving, engagement etc etc.
And of course there is the question of whether we’re going to naively recreate a new to-do list as we point out to ourselves that the shorter evenings and rainy days mean that it won’t even be fun to go out for a walk.
I’ll keep you posted, but I find it hard to think that I’m not going to once again set a series of unachievable aims, and then get frustrated when they don't’ get done…
