Dear Lock Down... I kind of miss you: A quick pause post lock down

I stroll down to the local Park on a Friday, our newborn is napping, and our boys are at kinder and so it had become somewhat routine during lock down to take our fur baby (Labradoodle) for a long walk at this time. It's mid morning and as I enter my brain and my dog expects the familiar sounds of kids laughing on the playground, groups having picnics, people going for walks but instead we are met with a surprising eery silence, replaced with the hum and clickety clack of trams and cars.

Like a gut punch it hits me... this was Melbourne pre-covid, busy lives, brunches, hustle and bustle and I felt a deep nostalgia of loss, followed by a nervous conviction of guilt for even missing anything in what was the worst time of my life. Was I suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress? A kind of depraved form of "Stockholm Syndrome"? A more concerning question crosses my mind even just for an instant... Do I really want to go back to who I was and what I was doing before? If not, what did I learn that I want to keep?

This is a question that I felt I shouldn't ignore, I could drown it out with another coffee or brunch, or work, but I had the feeling like 7 months in lock down (4 of them in the harshest lock downs in the world) needed at the least an acknowledgment.

I think anecdotally I'm not the only one, I know at least 7 individuals/ families who we were close with who have now made life choices to move from Melbourne to QLD, NSW, WA and Tasmania. People have quit jobs, found new ones, read books, quit social media, rioted for causes that matter to us, angrily argued politics online - it feels like we are a society that had it great, but when for a moment we were forced to pause we realised we perhaps despite being one of the wealthiest societies in human history, we weren't as happy or content with how life was before.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't an article advocating some amish extreme disposition away from society pre-covid. I was utterly miserable during lockdown, I am an extrovert, who owns a business, and loves culture, art, music, food etc, the intention of this reflective piece is to focus less on what we did, and more on who we were, how we thought and perhaps offer at the end some observed habits that Linda and I have decided we will keep.

The Hurry Hypothesis

Here is a startling fact from the Wall Street Journal: It found that during lock down we removed commuting which saved on average ~1 hour a day of time. The research asked the question... What did people do with this extra time? Well... they worked. Really? If you were told that you would have 25 hours a day how would you spend it? Apparently for the majority of white collar people they would work an extra hour a day... Or perhaps for you if you're honest you'd watch another show on Netflix? Or spend more time in the political rabbit holes of Youtube conspiracies? No judgment... because i'm the same, the confronting truth is my lived reality of this was far different then the idealistic answer I would have given. I definitely would have said something like "reading more" or "time with the kids" or "exercise more"... but I found my days feeling shorter not longer. I was leaving the home office later then I was leaving the work office when I had one... how is this possible?

John Mark Comer's new book "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry" speaks to this is far better words then this article can do justice, even if you just read the introduction, i'd highly recommend it. But he posits that we have become addicted to hurry, our attention spans are shorter, and our learning has less substance, reflection is gone and in the attention economy of the new world, quick information and facts without substance or context is the normal.

The "Hurry Hypothesis" Is a word i've coined, it's the false belief that hurry = efficiency = greater impact = greater contentment/ joy. For me and my context, it's the belief that the best way to make a difference with my life, is to work as much as humanly possible as efficiently as possible, which will lead to a greater impact and greater contentment. It's a commoditised view of life, and it's somewhat true.

The half truth: Working hard = More success

Why is this "somewhat true" well when you start a business it is true. You work late, because, you wear every hat because in reality when you are hustling you can't afford a book keeper. However the irony is the mindset that gets you to maybe $3 million revenue or 3 employees is the exact mindset that stops you getting to $30 million revenue or 300 employees. At some point there is a law of diminishing return, where your hustle becomes micromanagement, where your inspiring work ethic that previously mobilised everyone becomes a hindering bottle neck that frustrates everyone. This is the hurry hypothesis, that the energy and hustle you started with has to be the how you always operate, this is a false truth and it isn't sustainable.

We see this not just in start ups or founders though, in a fast paced information led, culture with technology every where, notifications, pushes, nudges, engineer an adrenalin led "hurry" that has become normal. Life was a blur, like a car racing through the city, you go past everything but observe nothing, and until Covid many of us probably didn't think any thing of it.

An eery reminder

The eery silence in the park was for me an avid reminder that life and my old patterns of thinking and operating are perhaps not who I wanted to be nor how I wanted to live. It was also a reminder for me that many people will fight for the old way again, we will experience the gravitational pull back to an unsustainable pace. BUT here is a simple question... is there a better way to live without compromising your ambitions?

Or for Linda and I the question was... what habits and changes did we make during Covid that we wanted to keep?

What habits and changes did we make during Covid that we wanted to keep?

A better way forward

Listen this article isn't about me telling you what to do, because the truth is all of us have different values and ambitions. But to invite us to pause and ask some good questions to help us all take stock, and move forward:

1. Was I content with how I was living pre-covid?
2. What is success to me? Has it changed post covid?
3. What was I sacrificing in order to live how I lived before? Is this the cost I want to keep paying?

Asking the questions matters, because the pull of fast paced life will have you as a passive victim to the design of the technology's, pressures and friendships around you. Unless you proactively live with proper intention you'll perhaps find that life happened to you rather then through you. Lock down was terrible, but what's more terrible is to go through something so significant and simply suffering from amnesia after without any learning or personal growth. This would be to "waste a crisis" in the words of Churchill.

I'll conclude with a simple quote from William Irvine in his book A guide tot he good life that says:

There is a danger that you will mislive—that despite all your activity, despite all the pleasant diversions you might have enjoyed while alive, you will end up living a bad life. There is, in other words, a danger that when you are on your deathbed, you will look back and realize that you wasted your one chance at living. Instead of spending your life pursuing something genuinely valuable, you squandered it because you allowed yourself to be distracted by the various baubles life has to offer.