What jobs are going to be in most demand when this pandemic is over? Where will they be located? What jobs won’t be in such current strong demand? I’m hoping someone has the answers to these basic questions now. Definitely not waiting to address them when the pandemic is over. My grandmother used to say it is quicker to break a jar than repair it. End of this pandemic will not mean an immediate economic recovery. And certainly not a return to what once was. We, as individuals, need to be using this time asking and answering, what can (the future) be? Not just accepting what we will be told the post covid-19 future holds for us.
“We’re plugged in 24 hours a day now. We’re all a part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not. And if we can’t unplug from that machine, eventually we going to become mindless.” Alan Lightman wrote this (worth Googling him) apparently about his frustration with email. Have you noticed how working from home is being subtly sold as a work life balance solution; be at home when the kids return from school, able to spend more time with your partner? Is this the ideal scenario for every individual? As much as less space to lease is for business and that employees are plugged into work 24 hours a day. And what about our primary need to socialise with peers isn’t that part of the work life balance? Can online interaction effectively replace face to face?
By preparing now for a post covid-19 world we help our economy recover quicker, enabling more jobs to be created, more businesses to open, share prices to recover, superannuation fund balances increase. Improving our standard of living. Do we actually know at what point our standard of living makes us happy, or does the machine continually sell to us the one to keep aspiring towards, but can never achieve (after all, once you get the sportscar you now need two)?
Everyone one is different, thus why we can’t just leave planning for the post covid-19 world to the machine that is government and big business. We need to be involved in the planning. We need to have input into the mechanism and not just accept the outputs.
All sounds too difficult, let’s just leave it to government and big business! Become mindless. Or is it ‘comfortably numb’?
As we self-isolate, we can watch hours of Netflix or retrain (prepare) ourselves for the post covid-19 world. Demand to know now what jobs are going to be in the greatest demand and where will they be. Demand training be made available online (where possible) now for these jobs. Hold online forums to re-image what our community could be post covid-19. Don’t accept the response, we have not faced these circumstances beforehand therefore, it would be wrong to make any predictions of the likely outcomes, that is a cop-out. Not all predictions come true, even those made by Nostradamus (who apparently predicted COVID-19) no matter how they are re-interpreted. But if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. This planning goes for government, businesses, communities, families and individuals. In the post covid-19 world some of us will need to move where the jobs will be, be ready to take advantage of the new long-term opportunities that will arise, reinvigorate businesses, rebuild community spirit, reconnect face to face with grandkids. Will you though, be ready to live the life you want, be it plugged into the machine or unplugged? Covid-19 is a conduit for change, we can’t stop that, but have input into the what the changes will be, we’re not mushrooms.