š” Focus on the problem, not the solution.
My obsession for needing to know "How much longer" has lead me further down the path of questions, not answers.
š The Letter
āIt is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding.ā - The Namesake
Itās been 6 weeks. 43 days that I have woken up and wondered - How much longer? It started first, more as an idle curiosity but has grown into an urgent, instant plea. I now find myself obsessing over imagining what itās going to be like when we āget back to normalā.
And so I search for more clues that can tell me. Tell me when I can expect may kids to go back to school, when I can get on a plane again, hell, when I can eat in a restaurant again.
I want answers about what my world will look like. And I realized this week that my obsession has been pointed in the wrong direction.
Itās a lesson Iāve learned over the past 5 years of navigating uncertainty and traversing risk. Never enough information, but always the urgency to act.
Living in the world of startups have taught me, over and over again:
Focus your obsession on the problem, not the solution.
Youāll find more insight and inspiration in digging deep into the nuances of the problem, understanding it from every angle, every facet possible than you will pouring over different fixes divorced from its vital context.
This lesson is what I need to remember, here in the In Between. The Great Limbo. Itās less about the answers we want and more about the questions we should be asking. Because thatās the only way weāre all going to figure out our own, After.
We see it already with some people staying strictly indoors while others are using the outdoors. Each other shaming and judging the other. It could be that both are right under certain circumstances.
Thatās exactly it - the After is going to look really variable, depending on a lot of factors that differ, place to place. Weāre, each of us, going to need to educate ourselves on the whys so we donāt fight over the hows.
And given the work I do, I want to understand all these questions through the lens of what parents should expect because itās not just us we need to plan for, but our whole families. And weāre the last people on Earth that have a ton of time on our hands.
So in the evenings last week, I turned to making a list of the questions I had and started reading up on them. The real questions I realized I should be asking:
What do we know so far?
Why are we doing this again?
What are we tracking and what are the nuances?
How will we know weāre ready to leave the Great Limbo?
What could the After look like and what determines it? Especially with respect to school, childcare, summer camps, grandparents - how do we think about these things?
Having asked these questions, I realized that I wanted to know the answers. Itās taken me down deep rabbit holes of epidemiology and supply chains and policy making and Iāve only quite literally scratched the surface.
And if thereās one summary statement to sum everything else up itās this:
What we donāt know far, far exceeds what we do know.
We have to remember that itās been mere months since weāve started tracking the vital data needed make sense of what we should or should not be doing. Add in that the problem looks just a bit different in every place, with different responses, and well, questions are really all we have.
But Iām starting at the beginning: What do we know so far? The difference between coronavirus vs COVID-19 or treatments vs. vaccines. What R0 and Rt are and why they might be our best metric for guiding the next 12-18 months.
Those answers, coming up next.
šavni
š³Cooking Therapy.
This weekend I needed comfort but I also needed adventure. I found both in this recipe for Spicy Sesame Noodles With Chicken and Peanuts. And boy did it deliver. Simple, ready in 15 minutes, lots of adventurous zing and flavor packaged up in the comfort of noodles.
šThe Bookshelf
A couple of weeks ago I tweeted out a plea for more books - the kind that grab you and carry you into their worlds with the magic of their words.
The overwhelming favorite: When Breath Becomes Air. Youād think itās a sad book but when you already know that the author doesnāt survive his words, it allows you to be fully present as you receive the gift he is giving. The tabulation of what a life amounts to and what time means, all written in a personal yet universal way. A quick but enduring read. Perhaps not surprisingly, especially poignant now.
āTo the east, the full light of day beamed toward you; to the west, night reigned with no hint of surrender. No philosopher can explain the sublime better than this, standing between day and night.ā