Coping with uncertain times

This too shall pass — but not before wreaking havoc.

First — hope you are safe and well. Take care of yourself, your family, your friends, coworkers and do your bit in your community. This is the time of giving, compassion, and empathy. Do whatever you can, and listen to the experts — they most definitely know much more and they mean no harm to us. And lastly, respect the folks who are risking their lives (and consequently, their family’s lives) every day to keep your house running smoothly.

The world as we know it is brought to a stand-still. The virus has affected millions of people (directly or indirectly) in a matter of a few weeks. These are REAL people (like you and me) living their daily lives with their own challenges. Tens of thousands of families have lost their loved ones and millions have lost their jobs and the ability to put food on the table. Again, these are REAL people, don’t relegate them to a statistic for future generations to memorize. This is the predicament humanity has found itself in and we have to cope with it, both individually and collectively.

Stay fit.

There aren’t many things under our control, but a few things are like staying fit, sleeping well, keeping yourself engaged and staying in-touch with your Circles of Acquaintanceship (yes, it’s a thing). Use this time to create a workout routine, and eat healthy (must be far easier now since access to junk food is tough). Discipline is the key to sticking with your routine, and it is much harder at home with all the distractions. Don’t get distracted!

Be engaged.

When fishermen can’t go to sea, they mend their nets.

While working on/with a startup, there are soo many things to do and this keeps me super engaged all day, even weekends. This is important, it takes your mind off things that you can’t control and channels your energy into something productive. Trust me, there are many things you can do:

• In sales? Now is the best time to reconnect with all your customers and have a friendly conversation. Maybe set up a remote demo or two.
• Are you a software developer? It’s the most peaceful time to remove all those hard-coded stuff you put “for now” 2 years ago.
• Marketing? People are spending most of their waking hours online on social media or in-front of television. Need I say more?

Whether it is working-from-home, learning a new skill, reading books or anything else, just muscle through it. It’s the best time to sharpen your tools and you come out of this lockdown stronger.

Keep-in-touch.

It is a testing time for some of my coworkers since they live away from families. While they plan to go home and spend time once the lockdown is lifted, it is important to stay connected with family and make sure everything is OK. Also, reconnect with your old friends and relatives that you’ve wanted to talk with for a long time now.

In conclusion — keep the faith.

A few months ago, I had a conversation about building a business from the ground up and while talking about resilience, we talked about keeping the faith. More of an affirmation, this phrase stuck with me and it summarises our outlook on life especially in these times. We were talking about sustaining a technology product business (early-stage startup) entirely on customer revenues while selling to enterprises in the engineering sector with fairly long sales cycles (anywhere between 6 -18 months). That’s a tall order, but that’s exactly what startups around the world do — beat those odds. To be sure, it is gross ignorance and cold-hearted to draw parallels, but remember the takeaway — keep the faith and beat the odds.