‘WHAT THE WORLD THINKS’ SERIES
A list of predictions for life after Coronavirus (Part 3)
How will we be living our lives after coronavirus is over? Here’s a collection of thoughts from people around the UK…
Taken from the podcast ‘What The World Thinks’ by Samantha Hornsby. But for those that don’t like listening, here are the most interesting predictions for you to read…
THIS WILL TRIGGER THE NEXT UBER OR AIRBNB: “I’m thinking of this quarantine/lockdown/isolation as cocooning. We’re in that really kind of strange, maybe even ugly, uncomfortable period where we’re in this cocoon and actually when we come out, the other side is going to be in lots of ways really quite wonderful. And back in 2008, when we had the last financial crisis, loads of big companies came out of that because they identified a gap in the market — an area they could disrupt. For some people this time is creating headspace to get creative and think about new ideas. So I think we’re going to see the benefit of lots of great ideas which could be the next Uber and Airbnb, maybe for 2021 and 2022.”
MALE TO MALE CONVERSATION HAS TRANSFORMED: “The way that people are connecting has changed — and I don’t mean in terms of digital and physical, but the deeper conversations that people are having, especially male to male where there’s suddenly something shared to talk about. We normally talk shoulder-to-shoulder and on a very surface level. But I’ve noticed both professionally and personally that we’re making deeper connections, we’re actively listening to each other, asking each other compassionate questions and forging deep connections, finding out things about each other that we quite often overlooked or hadn’t gone deep enough to access. We’re making eye contact, speaking quite deeply and quite openly and having meaningful conversations about how we feel, asking each other questions in regards to the current scenario — how your business is, how your family is, how are you dealing and how is your well-being, your mental health in this situation? What are your hopes and thoughts for the future and actually asking each of you? Do you need help? Is is something I can do for you? Is there a way we can work together or collaborate to make things better? I feel that is definitely going to change the culture going forward.”
A CHANGE IN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: “I really hope there is a massive change in people taking time to slow down and think about the planet and think about others more. Once everything goes back to normal, I fear we will fall back into the same routines. But hopefully not. I hope I’m wrong. And I hope that we have a new President over here after this. That will help change things, especially for the environment.”
AN ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTION: “I’m someone who kind of sits around and wants to do a lot of things, but never actively pursues them because I’m scared or nervous. But obviously being on lockdown and all the restrictions that are in place for me personally, it’s made me remember that life is really, really short. You have to take every single day as it comes, but also make sure that you’re not wasting any time. I remember I saw the other day this graph the other day showing emissions. You could see from it the reduction in emissions since the city has been on lockdown was insane. And Venice — the canals are clear for the first time in years and there’s fish swimming in them. This global lockdown is making everyone just taking a minute to stop. I hope people will be more environmentally conscious after this.”
A MORE CREATIVE NATION: “Creativity has been like a massive, massive thing. Loads of people creating content creating, thinking about innovative ways of doing things, creating colouring pages that you could print off at home or creating online exhibitions — it just goes to show that there’s a lot of creativity out there. It shows how important creativity and innovation is for the world and general society. I think it also goes to show that we all have a capacity to be creative. So I think when we do come out of this situation, we’ll have a new way of thinking and kind of a new mindset.”
BETTER SELF-CARE: “Personally, I’ll change my lifestyle. Take far better care of my body in terms of bad habits such as smoking and weekday drinking. Also, I’m gonna sleep more. I think I neglected sleep before Covid-19. After falling ill from the virus, the only real way you can recover is from resting. So I think I’ve got to see rest as more of a tool for endurance as opposed to a lazy luxury.”
MORE INSTAGRAM AS A TOOL FOR RECIPES: “People are cooking more because they have a bit more time. And everything is just more digital, so people who weren’t previously into getting their cooking recipes from instagram are finding ones one they really like and will continue using instagram.”
Enjoyed that? Want to read more predictions, or other articles from the ‘What The World Thinks’ article series? Well, here’s some more on Medium for you…
Want to hear the audio of people giving their predictions? You can find the predictions on episode 3 of What The World Thinks, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Simplecast (for desktop listening).
Thank you to those who shared their thoughts (in order of appearance):
Kim Sprague, Business & Leadership Coach (flamingo-life.com)
Lee Chambers, Environmental Psychologist & Founder of Essentialise Workplace Wellbeing (leechambers.org)
Dylan Booth, Events Manager
Tala Woods, Journalist, Copywriter & Poet (talawrites.com)
Ajay Pabial, Managing Director at Art Clubbers CIC (artclubbers.com)
Orla Enright, Partner at Good Soil Venture Capital (goodsoilvc.com)
Tom Harding, Co-Founder at Nemo Travel (nemo-travel.com)
