I’m sitting in my living room right now with my wife and two kids reading while I’m typing this out. The COVID-19 lockdown has sure changed things for everyone.
With school out and much of activities limited, the kids spend more time at home and have found different interesting things to keep them occupied. Reading had become a regular pastime (although TV and games have not gone away).
We were not a family to get out, to begin with, a curse when you’re a family of introverts, but it was useful having an option to go out to a movie, or park, or beach.
Some normalcy is returning with some of the lockdown rules being rolled back and businesses starting to reopen. We’re still limited in group sizes, and from going to beaches and rivers, but at least we go head out and exercise once again.
One wonders how COVID-19, or at least our response to it, is going to change the way we operate from now onwards.
I see some businesses in the tech sector saying that they’re going to be fulling remote work businesses. This is easy to say when you don’t require people to be physically at your location, for example, with manufacturing. I wonder if those businesses would see this as a reason to invest heavily in automation and robotics now?
What about people’s personal lives? Will they now seek entertainment from home and spend less at cinemas, restaurants and bars? I doubt it.
I think people want to get back to a place of normalcy. While introverts like myself are enjoying the quiet time, the other half of the population is losing their minds and want to get back out there.
Whatever the response, there’s no doubt that the way we live, work and play will change. We could only hope it’s for the better.