When you’re faced with an onslaught of news stories like the COVID-19 pandemic on a daily basis, how can you handle times of crisis? And deal with a high level of uncertainty?
There are three steps to take:
- Recognize how fears & negativity affect you.
- Turn down the negative in your digital life.
- Turn up the positive in your digital life.
And in my previous post, “Crisis & Uncertainty: How Doomscrolling and Coronasomnia Hurts Productivity,” we talked about this difficult time and how it’s led to an overconsumption of bad news. We’ve had to overcome a barrage of news stories: the coronavirus pandemic, terrorist attacks, financial crashes, and any other current crisis. We’ve tackled different parts of uncertainty: crises in news stories can affect how we think, how we feel, and how we behave.
Easier said than done, right?
Pausing to take a break from negativity
First, pause.
When we “take a break” from work, we’re tempted to take out the phone and thumb through Twitter feeds.
Instead, we should — intentionally and deliberately — pause information consumption. We can allow our minds to wander and go over the day's events. Smartwatches — like the Samsung Galaxy Active watch and the Apple Watch — have “breath” coaches that allow you to time your breath in mindfulness exercises.
McKinsey recommends the “pause-assess-anticipate-act cycle” to prevent rash decision-making and overreacting. You can make it a habit to pause the noise, assess different perspectives, anticipate scenarios that may happen (you can do this with scenario planning), then act on your plans (below, with decision planning) (McKinsey, “Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges”).
Take control of your emotions
Pausing gives you time to think! But if you let your emotions control you, things can get worse.
That’s because these emotions come from the amygdala, an emotional center for the brain. Sometimes, the amygdala can override our more rational, logical part of the mind — the prefrontal cortex. Letting emotions hijack us is a problem: if we rely on just emotions, we could leap to hasty judgments and poor outcomes.
You need to take this pause. Pausing lets you boost your attention, decrease distractions, and reduce fight-or-flight emotions.
Pausing also gives us time to reduce anxiety and de-escalate fraught situations. If instead you’re whipped up in a frenzy, this makes others be on edge and anxious. Mirror neurons in our minds allow emotions to spread in emotional contagion, a situation in which emotions & behaviors trigger similar emotions & behaviors in others. Thus, others could mirror your emotions.
Just think of the last time you desired to be in the presence of someone, like a friend, a mentor, or even a celebrity at a concert: you liked them because their energy is infectious, or their demeanor made you happy.
The same is true with negative emotions: people who are anxious will spread it throughout their co-workers, their team, and their workplace.
Ensure you're ready to act, even amidst uncertainty
Uncertainty can lead to analysis paralysis. People are accustomed to making decisions with certainty. But, when there’s not enough information — or too much information — that can lead to delays. Delays spell trouble when you need to act fast. In 2020, we saw numerous disasters unfold — climate-driven fires in Australia and the United States, assaults against civil demonstrators, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve seen that a lack of planning and delays has led to avoidable loss of life. And large consulting organizations realize these are issues. Monitor Deloitte writes in “COVID-19: Confronting uncertainty through and beyond the crisis”:
No country or sector, and no company, executive team, or individual leader will be immune from COVID-19’s impact and consequences. No strategy will survive fully intact.
The U.S. Army War College used such an acronym — “volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) environment” — in the early 1990’s, around a difficult time when the Soviet Union-United States Cold War ended. There are techniques to prepare yourself for VUCA situations.
Your bad-news detox: tune out the negative
Minimize the chatter & un-follow
Have you heard about the Low Information Diet? Coined by entrepreneur Tim Ferriss, the goal is to lower the amount of unnecessary information you consume. This frees up your time and brainpower despite uncertainty.
How can you reduce the noise?
First, don’t let your phone blow up with toxic news posts and useless social media alerts. Disable notifications from non-essential apps on your iPhone and Android.
Then, train yourself to ignore the red bubbles and red badges. If it’s possible, disable them. Not all apps — like Facebook — allow you to do so.
If you must have notifications, at least turn off the audible ringtones! (Do you really, truly need to reply immediately?)
I talk more about minimizing chaotic chatter and making your apps work for you in my Hack Productivity signature course.
Disable video auto-play on YouTube, Facebook, and more
One day, I caught my significant other hunched over her iPhone, watching a “professional caveman” make spears in viral Tiktok videos.
It turns out that she had sat there for half an hour — as Facebook auto-played video after video!
Apps like Facebook are designed to capture and hijack your attention. She didn't even have to scroll through anymore! The app simply played video after video.
Take back your attention. Disable Autoplay.
Reframe the negative into opportunity — something more useful
Now that you've paused and identified negative thoughts, do a reframe. When you reframe something, you convert thoughts into something more useful, positive, and constructive—put aside the uncertainty. Here are some questions to help you reframe your mindset, adapted from Nathan Furr. Nathan wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “You’re Not Powerless in the Face of Uncertainty”:
What can I learn from this? Can I see this as part of the game of life? You win some, you lose some. What can I be grateful for? What are some of the good things in life? Could this be the roll of the dice? Things that aren’t within your control are random.
Pump up the positive: replace with reliable habits and automated decision-making systems
Set boundaries & schedule time
If you truly want to stay informed and be in the loop, schedule dedicated time to read through the news. This allows you to review the latest while setting limits on these apps’ hunger for your attention.
One approach is to read a weekly news summary. In the past, magazines like Time and Newsweek served this purpose, providing weekly recaps. TV show programs like CBS Sunday Morning can provide a broader recap, with context.
Find reliable news sources
Find neutral, less inflammatory news sources. News sources that tend to make you feel angrier, more irritated, prevent you from rationally thinking things through.
You can do this by paying for long-form journalism. Quality journalism is based on high-quality data, with paid professional reporters, and experienced editors. While these are often behind a paywall, you may be able to get discounts or even free access through your school alumni associations, your workplace perks, or through clubs.
It’s worth it to fill your mind with something useful. Don’t go for cheap, ad-filled clickbaity blogs.
Subscribe to the good stuff on social media
Stop following harmful, fear-mongering news channels. Or, use a separate account — or perhaps an e-mail newsletter — where you can receive them in a time-limited fashion.
I myself have inadvertently filled my YouTube feed with videos of chipmunks and otter home videos, stand-up comedy, and travel and tourism — things I enjoy and feel good about.
My @mpowerhacks feed is filled with motivational quotes, mental health empowerment, and personal development nuggets.
Be judicious about how you let apps and media consume your brainpower.
Catalog all the things you have — and the good in life
Ensuring you have the right information at your fingertips can help you when urgent, acute crises suddenly occur.
I myself have — over the years — inventoried:
- financials: retirement funds, assets, and account access.
- belongings: technology equipment, cloud software account passwords, serial numbers, and even my backpacks so I don’t make impulse fashion buys. Take photos of what you have, for insurance purposes.
- passwords: keeping it securely in trusted, encrypted apps
This not only boosts your confidence but makes you feel more in control in case you need to take stock of what you own.
Anticipate the future — and track them in a “second brain” like Evernote, Notion, or OneNote
Put future scenarios in a note-taking system to free your mind from dwelling on things over and over again. If we weren’t able to write these out, our brains tend to spin and spin and dwell on catastrophe: the worst that could happen.
Plot out all possible scenarios — based on different factors — along with opportunities and risks.
Note-taking apps like Evernote, Notion and OneNote serve as a “second brain” for you, storing knowledge you would otherwise memorize or keep in your head. Having a “second brain” lets you write, organize, and file these scenarios and organize them on-screen.
I especially like apps like Evernote, Nimbus Notes, Notejoy, and Keep It because they preserve notes offline, which is handy during Internet outages. They're designed with two-paned views:
- preview note snippets on the left-hand side
- display note content on the right-hand side.
You can have notebooks for:
- References about your resources, facts. in your personal life, it could be inventories of your supplies and your financial statements. In business, it could be industry intelligence and annual reports.
- Scenarios. You might write one note per scenario.
- Emotions and reflections. You might think about what matters to you. I write about how you can become the CEO of your life in my Hack Productivity course.
- All your decisions, actions, and outcomes.
Scenarios are important because you want to think about all the different possibilities that occur in life. You can even assign “points” for each scenario — based on criteria — to allow you to make solid decisions in the future.
Track your decisions and actions — in Evernote, Notion, or OneNote
Once you have scenarios written out, plot out your next decisions & actions. All the potential actions can have different results in your life — perhaps immediately, but also 1 month, 3 months, and 6 months from now.
According to Monitor Deloitte, there are a variety of moves you can make in work and personal life, given a scenario:
- Actions you’re required to do — needed to survive, to ensure things go smoothly
- Actions that just make sense — these “no-regret moves” are things that are beneficial under all the scenarios
- Actions that are big bets, big moves, big leaps — these require a big investment in hopes of the payoff: the scenario you want
- Actions that are small bets, smaller moves, or smaller leaps
- Actions that depend on each scenario — these are conditional on each scenario. For instance, if I lose my job, I would start searching for another job.
Be transparent—communicate your actions
By organizing all the scenarios and actions in a way that makes sense, you can help your future self prepare your thoughts in a way that’s organized and understandable.
So, when you finally need to act, you can communicate your actions — and why you do them — to other people in your life, like your organization, your teammates, your family, and your personal contacts.
They may not like the actions. But — depending on the crisis, uncertainty, and the urgency — it’s better to overcommunicate, be transparent, and be consistent. Don’t frequently change your message, which could sow confusion.
So far, we've discussed strategies such as (1) pausing, (2) preparing to act, (3) setting up your environment, (4) plotting out scenarios, and (5) making decisions. It's like playing chess, where you try to figure out the next piece to move.
You can pause, act, and plan for even fun things, like planning vacations, travel, movie nights, and date nights!
Finally, beating uncertainty, crises, and disasters can take a village. Let's take a look at how to choose the people in your work life and your social circle.
Surround yourself with quality people
Keeping track of great contacts
McKinsey & Company recommends a crisis response team — a “network of teams” — that can collaborate and make decisions so that decisions occur and execute quickly under tumultuous times (McKinsey, “Leadership in a crisis: Responding to the coronavirus outbreak and future challenges”).
Each team has its own superpower. Much like superhero teams may have people who are good at — so you want to ensure you’ve got each team focusing on their own superpower.
For your personal life, you might have a team of friends that coordinates your children. Or, another team that coordinates safe housing. And another team that’s all into healthcare.
If you’re a startup entrepreneur, you may have a system where you delegate issues to your direct reports. One person could handle marketing during normal times. Another could handle crisis communications and publicity. Other teams can include operations, finance, human resources, and accounting.
You, too, can have your own network of teams.
Set your Contacts book to store all information and emergency contacts. Use tools like FullContact’s Contacts Plus (Contacts+) to synchronize your address books — and don’t rely on social networks in case they go offline.
I personally tag each of my contacts with their superpowers and their interests. That way, I can look them up quickly in case an urgent issue arises. I even rate those whom I feel most comfortable reaching out to for help, depending on how closely we've worked together in the past.
Huddle with people you trust
Set up weekly, scheduled check-ins with people you trust. Socially, this allows you to remain connected. In the professional world, this allows you to understand what is happening across departments.
McKinsey has a “fishbowl model” of meeting where one or two persons make decisions and are otherwise surrounded by experts and stakeholders. In the wake of uncertainty and the coronavirus crisis, they propose fishbowl meetings where you... (mckinsey.com)
- have specific people in the group — including people with the know-how
- identify decisions to be made
- create a forum for rapid debate so all can voice opinions
- then have select people make the actual decisive votes
Ensure you have diverse opinions. Diversity can provide new opinions, different perspectives — even if you disagree. Include people from different locations, different companies, different social circles, and different industries.
Boost your resilience, so you’re ready for future battles
The COVID-19 crisis — and the circumstances and threats of 2020 and beyond — underscore how important it is to be ready to not just beat stress, but have answers ready to make decisions amid uncertainty. You truly must build your own team, schedule, and lifestyle that supports you. No one will do this for you.
You’ll need to learn not just decision-making techniques, but also keep on working on self-development.
- mentorship — Are there mentors in your organization? How about at other similar organizations?
- learning courses — I’ve already mentioned my Hack Productivity course, but there are alternative options, like LinkedIn Learning, your human resources’ EAP and learning plans, and your alma mater’s alumni network.
- space and time for reflection — Reflect on how you might have overcome and improved on past crises.
Having all these can restore your sense of control, even during VUCA — “volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA)” — times.
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