Silver Linings Staybook: how to keep the good parts of lockdown, after it ends

We’re getting there. Auckland is steadily inching its way towards greater freedom, and the end of our restrictive lockdown. And while we don’t want to glorify this period of time, because it has been incredibly difficult for many individuals and organisations – there are some silver linings that we should try to hold onto, once life returns to normal.

Thrive Lab ran a small social survey recently, asking about people’s experiences of working throughout lockdown. The results were surprising, with over 64% of people noting they’d experienced a roughly equal mix of good and bad times, and 21% saying that their experiences had been ‘somewhat positive’ overall. That’s 85% of people who found lockdown to be neutral or good, on the whole. It’s a small sample, but a curious result all the same. So what are the silver linings?

Silver lining #1 - Goodbye chronic commuting stress

Aucklanders have really enjoyed breaking up with their commute, which isn’t surprising. Previous research by the AA found that Aucklanders spend roughly 85 hours - or more than 2 working weeks - in congestion each year, and much of that time is clocked up on the way to and from work.

Wellbeing researchers have known for some time that commuting really takes the smile off your dial. For instance, the Nobel Prize winning behavioural scientist, Daniel Kahneman, studied the emotions (or ‘affect’) associated with different parts of daily life, and found that commuting was associated with less positive emotion than any other daily activity, including housework.

Commuting - less fun than housework (Kahneman et al, 2004, p.1777).

Commuting also sucks in a way that we just don’t get used to – with a longitudinal study of life satisfaction showing that a 30-minute longer commute will still bring you down, 5 years later, and with academics in the International Journal of Human Resource Management observing that “such daily hassles and chronic exposure to constant stressors are known to be more detrimental to well-being than one-off tragic events” (p.3).

So commuting just isn’t that great. Soon we’ll talk about how to do it less, and how to do it better. But for now . . .

Silver lining #2 – Hello sleep-ins and heart health

Take away the school schedule, the commute to work, and the need to dress yourself properly, and what do you get? Glorious sleep ins. Alarm-free wake ups. Heaven – but with a twist, because you wake up in purgatory…

Research in the American Journal of Cardiology has shown that the US Covid lockdowns led people to change their sleep habits – going to bed later, but also sleeping in later, so that the total length of sleep increased from 6.8 hours to 7.5 hours a night. And why were cardiologists interested in this? Because the authors have a hunch that

this increase in sleep is resulting in fewer people having heart attacks. That’s a pretty good payoff for 40 winks.

You snooze, you win. (Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash).

Sleep deprivation also increases your risk of obesity, diabetes, stroke, anxiety and depression, and Alzheimer’s, to name a few. As such, US researchers are “advocat[ing] for using this global crisis to improve work and sleep habits of the general population, which may lead to overall health benefits for our society” (p.129).

Silver lining #3 – Time with the kids, with an upside for gender roles

Another common silver lining in the Thrive Lab survey was that people enjoyed spending more time with their kids – though of course, the parenting/working juggle is a struggle. One respondent commented that they enjoyed “letting go of schedules and time-bound activities” with their children, and instead “finding new things in our local community that we love to do and that are free”.

Women in particular appreciated having their partner around to share the parenting load - a finding that’s been verified by larger-scale studies. For instance in the UK,

the Office for National Statistics found that men did 58% more childcare during the first lockdown, which helped to shrink the disparity in caregiving hours between mums and dads.

This creates a win-win outcome: dads enjoy more quality time with their kids, and mums enjoy more headspace and time for roles other than parenting. As one father, cited in the Guardian explained, “[A]ll my dad friends share the same view, lockdown has been an absolute blessing in terms of spending time with our children, and seeing them grow and develop. . . I have no hankering to get back to the way it was before.”

Kids - tiring, but also little rays of sunshine. (Photo credit: Mi Pham on Unsplash).

Holding on to the silver linings

In addition to the silver linings listed above, Aucklanders have enjoyed saving money and going slower – two features of life which typically go hand in hand.

So how can we hold onto these good things, once life returns to normal?

For organisations

Most obviously, organisations should continue to allow flexible working – so that people can work from home or work non-standard hours. These changes enable people to avoid commuting altogether, or avoid peak periods of congestion, and this in turn can mean more sleep and time with the kids.

Gillian Brookes specialises in building flexible workplaces, and observes that Covid has accelerated the transition to remote work / working from home, but “almost shut down the conversation about other types of flexible working, like job sharing, and term-time working. These options relate to flex in the hours and days of work – not just the place of work.”

Enabling a ‘full flex’ culture might feel like a leap too far for managers who have found it difficult to maintain client delivery and staff morale, as their teams work from home during lockdown. But Brookes notes that positive change is possible – particularly if flex working is solved at the systems level, rather than by individual managers.

“Managers have been doing a great job, but without good systems and processes, the decisions that get made on flexible work will be based on the personality and the confidence of a particular manager. They get into these equity dilemmas, trying to meet everyone’s needs. But with the right tools - for instance, with regular, proactive team-based conversations about what is working well and what might need to change - managers don’t need to control from the centre – they can facilitate from the side.”

For individuals

At the individual level, the key thing to remember is that behaviour change and habit change is easiest when your life is in a state of flux – like, say, when you’ve just lived through a global pandemic and a months-long lockdown. So don’t rush back into your old routine, your old commute, your high-speed high-cost lifestyle. Take a bit of time to think about the features of lockdown that you would personally like to retain, and try to design them into your life.

Some pro tips on how to do that:

Establish ‘default settings’ that align with the lifestyle that you’re looking for. For instance, you may wish to establish a ‘working from home Wednesday’ which you block out in your calendar.
Travel with a family member, friend or colleague, if you do need to commute. Wellbeing research shows you’ll be happier if you ‘pimp your ride’ in this way.
If you have kids… consider sitting down as a family and doing a highlights reel from lockdown. Many people have really enjoyed the ‘old school’ experiences of beach trips and bush walks with the kids, getting out into nature and pottering along, rather than rushing from one social engagement to the next. There could be value in scheduling that sort of downtime into the weekends, as a habit.
Remember that all habits follow the same pattern – trigger, response, reward. Take note of the different triggers that you experience as you move out of lockdown – triggers to spend, to rush, to pack everything in because of FOMO and YOLO. Try to notice your habitual response, and then experiment with different responses. One question that may be useful – ‘What am I saying no to, if I say yes to this?’

A quick word on the dark clouds of lockdown

It would be remiss if we didn’t quickly talk about the ‘dark clouds’ of lockdown that have made everything pretty difficult. Small business closures and financial strain sit at the extreme end of the spectrum, but there are also ‘middling’ challenges like Zoom fatigue; the parenting-working juggle; loneliness and social isolation; excessive workload and no quiet time for deep work; and difficulty switching off, when you live and work in the same space.

What’s interesting is that none of these problems are unique to this period of time – but lockdown has exacerbated many of the tensions that people feel, day to day. We’ve always had too many meetings, parents that feel guilt when they leave for school pickup, excessive workloads, and mobile phones that connect us to work day and night, blurring the divide between paid time and private time.

Lockdown didn’t create all of these issues, it just exacerbated them. (Photo by Howling Red on Unsplash).

But again, this period of time is promising because everything is up in the air, and aspects of work are more malleable and up for redesign. This is a time for re-examination, for asking questions like -

Where do you add value, as an individual, a team, and as an organisation? And how can you do more of this value-add work, and less time-consuming filler?
How can you set aside time to work ‘on the business’, not ‘in the business’? Do you need permission, or could you start that now?
Where can you streamline or cut meetings, and use collaborative tools like Mural instead? What’s the actual purpose of your meeting, and is a meeting the best way of achieving that purpose?
How can you connect with colleagues in genuine and meaningful ways? Is it a regular coffee walk with a small group? Meetings without the distraction of mobile phones? Doing voluntary work as a team? Leaders showing their vulnerable side, so that everyone else feels ok to speak up?

Looking to the horizon

Improving the world of work is a long-term game, and quick fixes and advice articles will only take you so far. But the ultimate point here is that we have reason to hope, because the end of lockdown presents us with an opportunity - to see things differently, and to be more intentional about how we design our work into our lives.

Lockdown is ultimately a chance to see and do things differently. (Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash)

So by all means, get a haircut, get out of the trackies, and enjoy eating lunch in a café (once you can). But see if you can hold on to lockdown’s silver linings and address the dark clouds. Because social change happens at moments like this.

Or as Winston Churchill observed, you should “Never let a good crisis go to waste”.