The star-crossed 2020 Summer Olympics (held in 2021) will probably go down either as one of the most or least memorable Olympics in history. What will it be remembered for: the durability of the athletes and the organizers throughout a global pandemic? The willingness of some star athletes to drop out of events for mental health reasons? The lack of fans in the stands? The cardboard beds?
A year ago, there was a sudden “shock” to the world that caused mass disruption in people’s normal routines, forcing an uncomfortable behavioral change for most. This pandemic-induced shift to an isolated work-from-home (WFH) routine should become a shibboleth once vaccines flow freely. But perhaps it wont. Over the course of the last year, we’ve all acclimated to our new routines, comfy chairs, lounging in between “meetings”, kids-play at odd hours of the day, work-from-anywhere with a hot-spot connection… not too bad (assuming your profession or business was not too negatively impacted). This acclimation may be the reason why the way we work may have genuinely been transformed — permanently and in ways we’re just beginning to understand. To shift “back” to office parks, we’ll need an equally dramatic and “opposite shock” (i.e. an over-abundance of COVID babies disrupting home workspace, or who knows what.)
As 2020 plods along, new tech challenges I never thought we’d face are becoming realities. First of all, as I’m sure many of you who share living spaces have noticed, home internet connections have become less than ideal during the 8AM – 12 noon timeframe. My kids’ virtual learning via video hogs so much bandwidth that my own video calls for business are cutting out (fortunately, virtual school is only half a day).
Soccer/Futbol superstar, Lionel Messi, longed for a transfer after a humiliating Champions League knock out loss to Bayern Munich. Where to go from here? Paris? Manchester? Luckily, he built in a back-door exit clause in his contract where, if he notified Barcelona brass before the end of the current season, any club with a big enough wallet that was courting him could avoid paying Barcelona a $800 million transfer fee—obviously a prohibitive sum. ($800 million could actually buy you the entire Houston Astros baseball team, though this team would certainly be a fixer-upper.) This would then free up funds for Messi’s $80 million+ salary. Brilliant plan.
A lot has been made recently about the Twitter CEO telling his employees that they can work from home ‘forever’ if they see fit. This past Tuesday, the Twitter CEO sent out a much-talked-about email (funny he didn’t use his company’s namesake product for this). The email states, “if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever [emphasis added], we will make that happen.”
If you have money, savvy phisherman and whalers will find you. With most of the world hunkered down working from home, normal processes are disrupted, so this is a target-rich environment for scammers. They are lurking. Beware!
It wasn’t too long ago when the term “acclimated” did not mean you were adjusted to high altitude at your favorite rocky mountain ski resort. In the mid-1800’s, it meant you had survived a bout of yellow fever (which had a 50% kill rate) and were now immune.
Last week everything was as fancy as an iPhone 11. Being on a business conference call with the sounds of a baby happily chirping in the background was distracting. Those good old days (back in February) when anything less than elegance or perfection was disturbing.
