Capture your Pandemic Experience
Senia Maymin, PhD
Chief People Officer | Stanford PhD | Data-driven, ROI-focused, people-first leader | Board Presentations, HR Strategy, M&A, Employee Life Cycle
We're delighted to welcome you to our Daily Strategies for Working Remotely. Today we have with us Kathryn Britton. In addition to being an Executive Coach for Silicon Valley Change, Kathryn runs writer's workshops. I am in one of Kathryn's writer's workshops and love it. Today Kathryn suggests we take a long view as we live through these historic times and capture what we're experiencing for our future selves and for our descendants.
Watch the whole conversation here.
Except where otherwise noted, all the words below are Kathryn's.
Most of the presentations that you've been having so far have been about how to make things better today, how to become more resilient, how to show up for meetings, how to manage with children in the house.
We are making history right now.
I'm going to ask you to take a slightly different perspective. I'm going to ask you to throw your thoughts into the future and imagine, ‘What am I going to want to remember about this particularly stressful time?’ We are making history now. just as much as our ancestors that survived the world wars or the 1918 flu epidemic or the Great Depression. We are making history that people in the future will wonder about.
Imagine jumping forward 20 years. What you remember will be different from what you're actually experiencing right now. That is, unless you create some kind of contemporary record of what you're experiencing for the enlightenment of your future self, your children, your grandchildren, or anybody that might wonder, "What was it like to experience the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests?" Concerning the pandemic, I know that my ancestors made it through the 1918-1919 flu because I'm here. But what did they do? How did they manage the infection? How did they manage caring for the people that were ill? What did they learn that might be useful to us? I have no records to help me understand.
An Example of Personal History
To give you a sense of what it's like to have a record that was made by somebody at the time, I'll read from a letter my grandfather wrote home from the Western front in World War I. (To hear the story, click here.)
What do you hear in this passage? I hear every-day details. He was taking delight in getting a bath. Imagine going two weeks without a bath. He delighted in something delicious to eat, the cherries that he picked along the road. He noticed people in the fields going about their business and not paying any attention to the cannon fire that was going on over their heads. He was giving his wife a sense that he was okay because he was doing ordinary things.
This letter from my grandfather’s collection is not about anything enormous happening that would show up in a history book. Yet, by reading his words, we get a picture of what it was like to be right there in that time. When I asked him many years later, "Grandfather, what was it like for you to be in World War I?" he drew a completely different kind of picture. That's because the way we remember things is not exactly the way we experience them.
I suggest that you take some time right now to think about what you're experiencing and find a way to capture it so that when you look back from the future, you’ll see what this time was really like.
Perceiving Progress
Here’s a story showing an additional reason to capture the present. My sister had major surgery in March. I spent a great deal of time caring for her in the hospital and afterwards. We kept notes in an application called CaringBridge of what happened every day. Who did she talk to, both doctors and friends? What was she able to eat? What drains and tubes did she have taken out? What walks was she able to take? We did this to share with the people who wanted to know about her recovery so we didn’t have to have the same phone call over and over.
On about day 40 of her recovery, she was feeling very, very low spirited, "I’m never going to feel myself again." One of her friends sent her the notes we had posted on day 20, half way to where she was then, to remind her how much she had advanced. Think about yourself wanting to see the progress you make as this pandemic goes on. It is hard to do unless you put stakes in the ground that you can use as comparison points. Downward comparison from the present to the past can be very helpful in difficult times.
Questions for Capturing your Present Experience
Here are some questions that might stimulate your thinking.
- What's happening today?
- What's hard about what's happening today?
- What have we figured out?
- Where have I advanced?
- What is working better for me than it did when I first started this?
Make It Easy
I can hear people saying, "Ugh, I am so busy. I can barely breathe. You are suggesting that I take time to write these things down?" But it doesn't have to be writing. Maybe you always have your phone with you. Turn on your camera app and just talk to it for a minute to capture what's going on right now. That creates a record. Or if you do write, it doesn’t have to be long, grammatical, or fluent. Just capture the facts of what's going on right now.
You don’t even have to do it by yourself. Perhaps you could put the phone down in the middle of the dinner table, push the record button, and ask a question for everybody at the table to answer. The question might be "What is it that we want to remember about this particular day?"
Your Daily Routine Won't Seem Dull
Writing about the daily routine seems like it should be dull. I used to think, "Why would anyone ever want to read about how I spend my time?" Yet, I think back to my great grandmother who had 12 children, 10 boys and two girls. What was her life like when she was raising these children? I would love to know some of the details of her daily life. So push away thoughts of this being boring. Remember you are part of making history. The choices that you make today shape what your future is going to be like. Because all of our experiences add up, your choices affect what the future is going to be like for us all."
More Questions to Use as Prompts
- How do we divide up the chores? Who's doing what?
- How have we gotten the children and the family involved in working out the solutions to our daily problems? What part of the responsibility are they picking up?
- Who are we reaching out to? Particularly people who are alone. Why did you choose those particular people?
- What makes you laugh?
- What aspects of the old life do you miss the most? How are you compensating?
- Even possibly, what is it that's new that you actually like and want to continue into the future?"
Discussion
Senia: You've written an article about writing about what’s going on. Is this pretty much the same message?
Kathryn Britton: I published Uncertain times. Anxious times. Times to Write: Tips for Getting Beyond Writer's Block in the MAPP Magazine. It was intended for people who want to write and find it not happening. I wrote responses to the things I hear people saying, such as "I don't have time to think, so how could I have time to write?" or "I need two hour blocks to write anything, and I never get block like that," or "Who cares about what I say?" or "I sit down and my mind goes blank.”
In particular, I like the idea of story seeds. That is, if you don't have a lot of time to write, just write a few words that bring a particular situation back to mind soon after it happens. You might dictate it into your phone or write a few words on a note card and stick it in a jar. The time you spend capturing the idea will help fix the story in your mind. Story seeds might be about the things your kids do that are fun. Later on, you might think, "Oh, I wish I remembered what it was that Roger said that made everybody laugh so much."
Senia: Here's what I'm hearing: Capture your experiences. Make it easy on yourself.
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