Covid & Ugadi

Today is Ugadi (Telugu New Year)! Wishing all my friends out there an amazing new year ahead 🎉

It is particularly not a great time in the history of the world but hey, we can celebrate a little and raise the human spirit in all of us. For the first time, irrespective of gender, geography, race, creed, color, we are all coming together for one purpose. This is an amazing gift from a virus to all of us 🙏 I guess we can have a fresh start from here. There is no better day to kickstart our new beginnings than today.

So to my friends who do not know the significance of Ugadi, here is a little something for you.

The minute I utter the word Ugadi, the pachadi(a special dish) hits the mind and salivary glands. If you examine the pachadi recipe closely, an alchemy of about 6 tastes come together. The consumption of this pachadi symbolises the fact that "this year I will take everything gracefully and I shall accept everything as a part of me irrespective of it being sweet, salty, spicy, tangy, sour or bitter. In a metaphoric sense it means whatever hits me (sadness, happiness, surprise, disgust, anger or fear) I will take it the same way. There will be no likes or dislikes at my end. There will be no distinction in the way i receive life. What a timing to be reminded about the beauty of life in the name of Ugadi!

I don't know about you, but the past week has been an interesting inward journey for me. Thanks to Covid, I got some time to think about stuff. I did stop and reflect all things life. In all the recent reflections, this one topic kept on surfacing all through the week highlighting its importance in current times. The only word that kept on coming to me is: Identity. From stone age to digital era they have mattered a lot but now in the digital world they still matter. Now with Covid and blurring borders, i want to bring out some of those experiences and reflections here as we are forced to go through physical distancing and online socialising. As a human being it is a scary place to be. Cognitive science and behavioural science is my specialisation. In the little things I understand about homo sapiens, we are highly social beings and we love to do productive work everyday.

With this virus, that important part of being human is taken away. With so much working from home, hockey stick curves of the pandemic, accelerating death rates, panic across the globe, anxiety around healthcare systems, stupidity of people around, it is easy to break down and get into a rabbit hole. So here are some tips to follow to keep yourself intact in such tumultuous times.

1. Establish a routine for your lockdown days. It can get crappy in your head very quickly and it will end up affecting your overall mood for days together. My simple routine plan for everyone is, wake up the same time, sleep the same time, eat at the same times, have beverages at the same times, work at the same time, have fun at the same time, wash hands at the same intervals every single day. Basically, more routines you have, better it gets for you. The rationale is an established routine will reduce the load on your pre frontal cortex (brain). The more you think (about anything), the more your PFC is loaded, the harder it gets for you to handle. This is a time you need very little thinking on mundane stuff. Use your PFC for things that matter. We have enough to deal with.
2. Have an inner circle chat everyday. Nah, i am not talking about your family Whatsapp groups. I am talking about you having a video chat with people who matter to you every single day. Have a chat time. Set a calendar. Just rant, share anxieties, share jokes, share mindless nonsense, laugh in a video chat. If you have amazing friends please get together online once and just have a good banter. You need it the most now! chuck everything else and focus on speaking to people who matter. You need a place to pour in your stress and low feeling. It will get better once your share. If you don't have such friends, form random groups and talk about stuff. What matters is you talking about stuff and not holding it inside you. Talk to your friends who are far away. This is the time they need you.
3. Unfollow your social media followers. The algorithm throws in what they post and that is called your feed or wall or whatever. Protect your feed as that is your input. The more non sensical feed you have, you have bad input to process. Listen to sensible people. For example: I make a seasonal list and my list keeps varying. With every season I change whom to listen to. Now i am listening to infectious disease specialists, data scientists, deep thinkers, WHO, CDC, Indian Govt etc. I will be sure to unfollow all these people when Covid settles down. There is a timeless list as well. These people will talk sense whatsoever. It could be subject matter or films or books or whatever. Make choice now!
4. Walk in doors. A balcony is enough to practice for a marathon. Be active. You need better brain health now. Walks and simple physical activities will help you combat everything that comes your way. Your brain health is directly proportional to your physical activities. Wash, clean, deep clean, rearrange, do something. You will feel better. Don't take this lightly.
5. Keep a very busy schedule during this period. An idle mind is devils workshop. In a day you have 32 X 30 mins of active work. I didn't include 8 hours of your precious sleep in this. See if you can have some 40 things to do in a day. Crush it. A busy day makes you feel productive. Most needed right now.
6. Get social and ask people in DMs how are they doing. Connect with more folks. Talk to strangers. This is the time to be more human. Not everything is a deal. As a designer let me tell you this, business has nothing to do with your humaneness. Business is all about the value you add to another entity. However crappy you are, if you are valuable, entities will come to you. Look around how many jerks are able to do amazing business 👀 Your humanness just makes it easy to do good business and not the other way around. So go ahead and say hi. Listen to stories. Share your care and warmth. It is needed now. You will also feel good.

Let us start here and now! Your mental health and physical health is more important in combating the virus and all its consequences. Wash your hands and stay safe. We can do this together.

P.S: We have a ladies banter club. You can join in if you can make time. We banter at 2 PM everyday. Just for fun! Don't come here if you need intellectually stimulating conversations. We are far away from that.... It is a silly group.