Three Life-skills to Surviving and Thriving in the time of COVID-19
THREE SURVIVAL (AND THRIVING ) SKILLS in this time of global pandemic… skills I wish were taught at the secondary level as required subjects, and skills I continue to learn:
1. Financial literacy
2. Risk and Evidence-based Thinking
3. Attention Management
1. Financial Literacy
FINANCIAL LITERACY would have curbed consumerism and saved a lot of people from the economic devastation about to happen, if not, already happening. Not too late: knowing the institutional support available, making the most of resources beyond money, using the extra downtime at home to learn more, and even asking advice from the experts would help. There are plenty of free resources online to improve your financial literacy, for example:
Family and Personal Financial Planning (Free by Coursera)
Financial Planning for Young Adults
Free Financial Literacy Resources
Do’s and Don’ts For Getting Cash in a Pinch
2. Risk and Evidence-based Thinking
Instead of teaching and preaching “be positive” all the time, appreciate the randomness of the universe. Understanding risk means understanding the likelihood and consequences. That includes accepting likely negative events with eyes wide open when evidence is presented. It also means, challenging overly optimistic scenarios with evidence, like when a leader says “this will be gone by April, like a miracle.” (As a result, USA now has the highest number of COVID-19 cases globally)By appreciating and understanding risk, responsible leaders would have acted way faster. They would have understood that the longer you delay, the more painful trade-offs would be made.
This applies not only to leaders but to all of us by following simple guidelines. We reduce the risk not just to ourselves but to the community. Understand that there is individual risk, but also systemic or community-wide risk.
3. Attention Management
How we use our attention is an exquisite life skill that many magicians have mastered. We can train ourselves what we pay attention to. We can train others what they pay attention to. The structure of separation of home from school and work, two external structures that manage our attention, is no longer there in times of isolation and lockdown. This has a lot of implications — even I struggled over the last two weeks, with the distraction of keeping myself updated, with the news, and with my family and friends.
I sincerely wish us to be HIGHLY RESOURCEFUL and ANTI-FRAGILE in these challenging and uncertain times — and having the three skills above are extremely useful to make us so. Simply “be positive” doesn’t help much and could actually be detrimental especially as misplaced optimism.
