A pandemic is a terrible thing to waste
Working with data I should have known better about perspectives. How I slice my data determines what revelation dawns upon me. I believe no matter how haphazard our behavior may seem humans always behave mathematically. I unlock insights from data for a living… and yet I failed to recognize patterns in my daily life.
COVID-19 has affected us in unprecedented ways. Just the number of times I have heard the word unprecedented in the last 3 months is unprecedented. Life is resilient and will eventually reach equilibrium, but it will not look the same anymore. The ones who will change to the change will emerge sharpened and ones struggling to go back to the old will struggle.
fueling a fresh start
One of my biggest discoveries through this period was mornings. I realized, all those mornings, waking up in a frenzy, rushing out the door trying to beat traffic was a terrible way to begin my day. It probably took away a big portion of my capacity that could have been optimally applied elsewhere. Sharing a morning meal with my two toddlers at home was more rejuvenating than an hour’s worth of breaks between work tasks. Not to mention the informal setting at home and the ability to take frequent breaks conveniently allowed me to achieve my daily push-ups target. Finally!
The switch to working from home was like an act of slicing human behavior data. It displayed what is truly critical to the bottom line. The “Zoom” and the “Teams” were tools that were always at my disposal, but I never adopted them to do any more. Nothing can replace a personal meeting and a handshake, but for running business as usual there is a lot that can be covered efficiently with these tools. As a matter of fact, interaction with my team has gone up as we have daily stand ups and reviews specifically to cover our absence at the office. A colleague’s home office, casual attire or a personal coffee mug during our morning calls really brings the team together on a much deeper level. As it so happens, there never seems to be a fixed lunch hour when working from home. Often lunch is wrapped up within 30 minutes or even taken at the desk. 5pm now has become a blurry line. With flexibility to attend to family within work hours my family has unsuspectingly given in to any unfinished business past 5pm.
finding the common thread
At PREDICTif, we enable cloud expertise, a technology that levels the workspace in terms of personal access and availability. The pandemic has unsurprisingly unlocked a brisk adoption of such technologies. Customers are beginning to look past the noise and packaging to realize true added value achieved from the product inside the box. The products that we bring to the table for our clients are a consequence of that very mindset. Working around COVID made us realize that is how we should be working in many ways.
As we go through this epidemic, I shall keep my face masked but my mind open to any new practice or approach that brings true value and embrace it instantly when presented. It will only help deliver resourceful insights to my customers that will save them dollars in ways I never knew and save my family some quality time.
I have also come to understand that when work is carefully peppered with family, it could enhance the flavor at work that makes work more delectable and myself more eager.
