The Coronavirus Pandemic: How To Think Proactively
Governments are not going to be the ones proactive. It’s up to you to be so.
A way of thinking that I’m going to write about in this post is so essential not only these days at the time of the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s really something I’ve been talking about for years and something that will serve you in the long run.
It is, however, absolutely mission-critical these days as the world is facing COVID-19.
I’m going to share about it for the short term and the long term and at the end of the post – just for fun, because I need to talk to someone, locked in here – I’m going to share some of my theories on what’s coming down, my (sci-fi?!) predictions on what will be happening in the world for the next 3 to 12 months.
Proactive Thinking: How To Go About It
This shift I’m addressing here is about going from being reactive to proactive on a day-to-day basis.
What this means is you’re not waking up, checking the news, responding to messages or emails, but you’re rather thinking long term.
You’re thinking: Hey, okay, let’s plan out my next week. What are my big goals? Am I trying to write a book? Am I trying to learn a language? Am I trying to finish this painting?
Then you plan that out the night before. You wake up and you don’t react to what’s out there happening in the world. You don’t check communication, you don’t check email, or Facebook, or whatever you check when you wake up and then you work on your plan.
You’re being proactive – you’re doing things that you’ve thought about in advance and planned to do.
This is something I’ve been teaching for years and it’s absolutely essential to any kind of entrepreneur or freelancer to operate this way – really, there’s no other way to operate.
And I’ll admit, it’s becoming harder and harder to operate this way at the coronavirus outbreak.
The last few weeks I have not been able to wake up and not check the news and not check my communication and I do think that’s going to be normal for most of us for the next couple of weeks at least. That we’ll get stuck in this reactive mode, checking what’s going on outside. It’s pandemic!
The reality is, for me right now: We’re in this house we haven’t left for a week and nothing that’s happening outside changes things too much.
I told my friends and family weeks ago, at the very start of corona virus outbreak, what I think is going to happen in the world and to take prevention and control measures seriously. Nonetheless, there’s something about the energy right now that’s going to make us reactive and that’s why I’m reiterating this point and sharing this again, just as a reminder to try to fight back against that and do your best to be thinking ahead.
Thinking about the next 3 months, let’s say – what do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do?
Now, given the times we’re in, another part of this approach that’s so essential is being proactive and thinking about what you think the world will be like 3 to 12 months from now.
Things were pretty stable before. The situation might change a little bit, but relative to the way they are now, relative to the way they might have been in the distant past, they were pretty freakin’ stable.
It was easy to plan what you wanted to do, like: Hey, I’ll spend the next few months writing this book or having this trip or whatever it happens to be.
That’s not going to be the case right now.
What’s the World Going to Look Like after Corona?
We all need to start thinking about what the world’s going to look like.
What are the trends?
What are the changes and how will those impact what we want to do?
Then we have to plan around that and be proactive, make our plan based on what we think the world is going to be like and then follow it on a day-to-day basis if we want to make the most of these times now.
Some of these trends are kind of obvious, some less.
The obvious ones are people are going to be at home more and they’re going to be taking in more information. That could be online courses or that could be just social media in general.
There’s a huge spike on Netflix usage, Facebook, and Instagram usage.
The number of people who are doing live streams right now and are following those live streams on Instagram – every celebrity seems to be doing them.
People are feeling disconnected and lonely and it just makes sense. We’ll see a lot more connection in that way.
I also think, and at least I’m optimistic and hoping for, that there will be a trend towards getting in touch with our roots.
Maybe I’m just biased and projecting here, but when we were preparing for lockdown in this place, I bought a chess set, cards, and some board games and it was:
Let’s try to go old-fashioned now because if we spend the next 15 hours a day on social media, on the news, and all that, that’s not going to be mentally healthy.
People already do too much of that and that is not going to be good.
So I do think there’s going to be a trend towards relationships: People really appreciating conversation, actually calling people a lot more, having video calls instead of texting all the time.
I think you might also see that trend in the future of people relearning how to sew, how to garden, how to grow their own vegetables, not necessarily because we’re going to need to grow our own vegetables, but we’ll be thinking about how helpless most people are and how nice it might be to actually make things. grow things, and have a little more control over our lives.
Learning to cook, learning to sew, learning to make stuff, physically fix stuff in your own house, maybe make your own furniture, and all these sorts of things.
There’s going to be a serious lack of travel. I’ve recently filmed a course on location independence that I made for the members of my Dreamers and Doers Community – yeah, probably not the most popular course right now.
But I think we’re going to see a spike, say 12 months from now or so and I’ll actually share a crazy prediction I have at the end of the post that’s tied in with that.
This is not an uplifting topic to talk about, but we have to be realistic.
Now, we’re going to start to see a big transfer of wealth. The death rate is going to rise. There’s no way around that at this point, sadly, and that’s going to mean a big shift of wealth in terms of inheritance.
The baby boomer generation is one of the wealthiest generations in history and that money is going to move to their children who tend to be spenders who are also going to be coming out of this time of lockdown and quarantine and a few things will happen from that.
One: People will learn to appreciate life more and think:
Wow, I should have been traveling more. I should have been seeing the world. All these things that I took for granted and never did because I was at my job all the time!
That combined with inheriting a bunch of money is going to really change people’s behavior.
The other thing is more and more people are forced to work from home. I think you’re going to see people and companies stick to that.
In the 4-Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss talks about the way to get to work from home from your job is to basically say:
Oh, I’m feeling sick this week. Could I just try out working from home? I’m really overwhelmed.
And then do it a little bit and the more you do it, the likelihood that you just keep doing it is really high.
Momentum is very powerful with people. Once we’re doing something, we tend to stick to it. We’re not good at changing directions.
So I think you’re going to see this huge amount of people who get used to working from home, companies get used to it, then you’re going to see this inheritance and there’ll be some serious shifts in behavior, say 12 to 18 months from now.
I would not want to be in the travel industry right now, but I do think with smart planning and looking ahead, there might be a real boom 12 to 18 months.
There are, of course, a ton of other trends and I can probably add and -I will- actually make a few videos just on that, maybe in terms of investing, but more just in terms of planning your business and life and thinking about where things will go after the coronavirus epidemic.
Coronavirus: The Next Possible Step
Now, I promised I’d share some of my more interesting predictions that so far I have only been sharing with friends.
I should say, for the past couple of months, I’ve been following the news about coronavirus a lot.
Two of my friends were in Beijing since the beginning of the epidemic and they’re now there as well, where it’s probably the safest place in the world at the moment.
So I’ve been following this and I’ve generally been ahead of the curve in terms of predicting things and it served me very well in terms of not being surprised by any of this, and in terms of preparations. We’ve got a month of food here and it’s not crappy food! It’s everything we could want to eat.
I’m going to continue this trend and see if I’m on point with any of this stuff, but I think I am.
Last week I started talking to friends about how what I think is going to happen is they’re going to have the antibody test, which will be a test not to see if you have the corona virus, but if you’ve had the virus and then what’s going to happen is people who have had it are going to either:
1. Return to work early and just go back to normal, or
2. Actually be able to help out more: Volunteer at hospitals, deliver food, go to places where being immune to this virus can be really, really useful for society. I think how those people are used will depend on the extremes of the society – how overwhelmed the system is with cases and everything else.
Maybe with that, there’d be some kind of identification system, something probably you have to wear externally that you can only get from the government or if you fake it, it’s a massive fine or jail time. And that allows you to move around freely.
Then I thought what’s naturally going to follow.
Naturally, you’re going to have young healthy people who will say:
Okay, I’m going to go out of my way to get exposed, develop all the virus symptoms, because then I will have the coronavirus diagnosis and then I’ll have a few weeks in quarantine.
They get the coronavirus, then they’re in quarantine, but then they can go free.
So it’s kind of worth getting because you’re already in quarantine basically everywhere!
Then I was thinking:
Well, probably the government might actually encourage this because governments are very, very concerned with money and the economy, so they might actually say:
Hey, this is not something we’re making anyone do. But if you’re young and healthy and have no pre-existing conditions, a week before to boost your immune system we’ll give you all these vitamins and drugs and then you’ll get infected with coronavirus. You’ll have a 3 week quarantine and then, afterwards, you can go back and work.
But in order to do this program and be officially certified, you have to commit to one day a week to serve in society, at the very least, where you’ll do things that it’s safer to do because you’ll have the immunity.
People who have immunity can go back to work and that will kind of take a little bit of pressure off as people can start going back to work.
One of the things that’s really important to realize is the official numbers of cases. The real cases are somewhere between, I would guess, 10 and 50 times what you see. For example, in the UK, they’ve said officially it’s 10 or 20 times higher than the official numbers.
In places like Spain everyone I’ve talked to who’s tried to get tested – you call the number, it’s just busy! In a lot of places like the UK, they say if you have coronavirus symptoms, just self-isolate, don’t come in and get tested.
So these testing numbers that you see are just what have been officially tested, which are usually the worst cases.
The reason this is important is if there’s only around 10,000 cases somewhere, then this whole thing of “if you have immunity, you can go back to work” is not going to affect society that much. But in reality, my guess is in Spain, there are 200,000 to 400,000-500,000 cases right now, they’ll never have those numbers announced. Well, actually they will – later with the antibodies and they’ll see it.
That is a big difference. When you have that many people that can affect the workforce, that can really contribute, to volunteer, to go out and do stuff, so that’s what the UK, at least, is looking at already and thinking about.
My “Sci-Fi” Coronavirus Prediction
What happens in a society when a certain group feels restricted, trapped, like they have no rights, and another group has all the freedom and all the rights?
What usually happens in societies at that point?
You’ll have 10% of the people – we’ll call them “The Immunities” – The Immunities are walking around free and doing whatever they want, in some cases, because they were the irresponsible ones who didn’t protect themselves, who probably spread the coronavirus, who probably went out when they should have not.
So you’re going to have people who start to be resentful and they’re standing on their balconies, if they even have a balcony, maybe their window, and they’re watching these Immunities walk around and just live life!
That could get very interesting in terms of a sci-fi movie – that will potentially be a reality.
Now, if I was in charge, and I never wanted to be in politics, but the last month or two I’ve been thinking I should have been saving the frickin’ world, is:
If you want to get this immunity badge that allows you to go out, you are not allowed to post anything outside your house on social media.
That would be the law I would enforce.
If you want the freedom to go wherever, you are not allowed to share it online with all the people who are stuck at home because that could get really weird.
I then also see high-end travel opening up. There’s gonna be all these airplanes sitting around at some point – they will start running flights again and say:
Hey, okay, if you have this proof that you’re immune, you can now fly.
And flights will be way more expensive, but there’ll be travel opportunities, I would guess, say, 4 to 6 months from now,
That will come back up in countries that are really organized and thinking about their economy like the UK, this will happen sooner.
In places like Southern Europe I think it’s going to be much more of a mess and no one’s thinking this far ahead.
I mean, okay, I get like 30 seconds of ranting here!
Why in January, when the coronavirus cases were popping up in China, why were governments not just saying publicly, putting out a tender for local businesses to say:
Hey, we will pay X amount for mass equipment for this. You have to meet these specifications, but we will pay for them.
They didn’t even need to take over factory and force companies to make things. They could have just said We’ll buy them at a slight premium and prepared.
If the virus didn’t make it to Europe, they could have just had all these extra masks that they could use over the next years.
And once it came to Europe around a month ago, why didn’t they start this?
I mean, now, governments are barely starting to convert factories and start making equipment.
Okay, rant over.
Governments are not going to be the ones proactive. It’s up to you to be so.
Think ahead to the future. Think about what things are going to look like. Plan your life and your business around that and then plan your days around that and it’s going to be a lot smoother year for you and those you love.
Before you say it in the comments: Yes, you do become immune to this virus.
There’s a bunch of BS I’ve been arguing with a bunch of friends and friends of friends on this because there were a few bad testing situations where someone appeared to get it twice.
That’s not how the immune system works. You do not get this twice at least within around a year, that’s what all the experts say.
Let me know in the comments:
What steps are you taking to act proactively at the time of this coronavirus pandemic?
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