How I adapted to a COVID 19 World

I’m back! After taking a social media break for 3 months. On the eve of the 2020 New Year, I made an unusual resolution. A resolution that I thought would help reclaim my mind and bring out the artist in me. You see, since I stepped into the world of enabling Businesses & Careers (through my Training, Coaching & Speaking projects), I was doing multiple things to run the business and spreading the word. Sadly, that left me little time to focus on creating original content, or in other words, my 'creative artist' started dying. Therefore I made a new year resolution that would help me reclaim the creative artist before it got completely lost within my inner vacuum.

The question still remained, how do I do it?

So I analyzed how I was spending my year, I realized that in 2018-19 a good portion of my time went into social media consumption & promotions. So I made a resolution to take a social media break for 3 months and focus on my ‘creative artist.’ You would be now wondering what does creativity means to me. Short answer - "Discovering & developing new frontiers in finding Human & Business Potential." Specifically, I do this in 3 ways:

1. Writing original content (like articles, books)
2. Creating visual resources (e.g. videos, e-learning) &
3. Crafting development solutions (like training modules)

But there was a twist to my story!

Little did I know that the future was about to test me in more ways than one. I thought, my only enemy was FOMO (fear of missing out) the social media but COVID 19 multiplied the enemies or challenges. It happened in the long Chinese New Year holiday (when we all were taking a much-deserved break), the news of break out in China spread, and things in Hong Kong (which is home for me for the last 10 years) flipped overnight. Slowly and steadily life became tough, schools were closed, parenting was no longer easy, businesses collapsed and everyone suddenly jumped into the digital world...

Talking of the digital world, something totally blew me away!

This week, after I step back into the digital world, I was blown away with the sheer exponential growth of our digital footprint (some companies clearly were making money out of the pandemic). Consider the following 3 statistics.

1. Zoom's daily users ballooned to more than 200 million in March from a previous maximum total of 10 million (source: Reuters)
2. On Instagram, there were 124 million active users in March (source: NapoleanCat)
3. Facebook said, Messaging has increased over 50% and time in group calling (calls with three or more participants) increased by over 1000% in March (source: Facebook).

What does this mean to you?

In one form or another, we all play the role of a BUYER because ’all’ goods & services whether purchased online or offline are influenced by their digital presence. Consider just 1 example of an offline purchase, you may be buying a sofa from Ikea but chances are you would still go online to check availability, review the product... before you make the purchase in the store. This sudden surge on the internet has created a quality issue, where filtering the quality of information has become a herculean task. 

Finding credible recommendations on the internet feels like looking for a ‘needle in a haystack.’

While, I don’t have a magic solution for all the areas you deal in but I can surely help you in the areas that revolve around my expertise, which focuses on enabling Executives & Entrepreneurs with Business Skills (I will share more resources in the weeks to follow). So in the last few weeks of living my resolution, I continued supporting my Client requests but also continued my pursuit of developing new breakthroughs and giving my creative artist a fresh lease of life.

I must admit, I was tempted to break my resolution. But I stuck on and continued focusing on improving my existing modules, progressing my books, creating digital solutions...

"Change is a STRUGGLE in the beggining, becomes STRESSFUL in the middle but leads to SUCCESS in end."

I also made sure that I adapted and made the solutions relevant to the post-COVID 19 worlds and it feels gratifying to reflect on what I managed to accomplish. Let me share 3 activities with you that infused life into my creative artist:

1. Crafting extended high potential Talent development journeys for Enterprises
2. Refining Business scalability modules for Entrepreneurs
3. Developing new curriculum on Career Coaching for Executives

The journey was tough and filled with bumps all the way. However, my 25 years of work on creating both Offline and Online content helped me adapt to the new COVID 19 world. Some say, "this is the new normal." I can’t predict the future but I can assure you that I am a living example of someone who has not only adapted to the post COVID world but also continued to follow his passion for empowering Executives & Entrepreneurs. As you would notice from my picture that even my delivery methodologies have shifted online.

Stay tuned for resources that I will share in the weeks to come for you to embrace the 'new normal.'

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About the Author:

Aalok Gupta is a Global Thought Leader & Award-Winning International Speaker, who supports Organizations to develop Skills & transfers Know-How to achieve their goals. Through his compelling Speeches, transformational Workshops & Executive Coaching, Aalok demonstrates how any organization (large or small, public or private) can improve profitability through the right skillsets. He is one of the few Change Experts in Asia who leverages his understanding of Technology along with Organization Psychology to support Companies to navigate in the Digital Age. To know more you can connect at:

• https://aalokgupta.com
• https://twitter.com/aalokgupta
• https://www.facebook.com/aalokngupta
• https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/aalokngupta