The world has changed in ways that were unimaginable just weeks ago.
Though humanity has a common arc for the first time in modern history, this crisis is affecting everyone differently. Some have become full-time teleworkers or homeschoolers (or both). Some have lost their job or business. Some have battled the virus or had a loved one fall ill.
Yet everyone is experiencing a profound loss of normalcy and grief for what their life was supposed to be this year.
Albert Camus once said that “in the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” Since this deep winter began, I’ve searched for my invincible summer.
Initially, I thought the answer could be found in what I accomplished during my quarantine.** After all, Shakespeare wrote three of his best plays while social distancing. And while Issac Newton’s university was closed amid the same epidemic, he spent that year becoming the world’s foremost mathematician.
To kick off my productive pandemic, I decided to paint every wall of our apartment. In early March, as I loaded several gallons of Glidden into my car, I felt a kind of euphoria wash over me when I imagined everything I was going to accomplish.
But five weeks later, I’ve barely painted one wall.
Productivity was replaced by paralysis. I am gripped by constant anxiety about the health of my loved ones, grief over the loss of my livelihood, and dread about what lies ahead. The question “how can I get through this productively?” morphed into “can I even get through this?”
Last week, I shared my experience with a colleague. “Wow,” he replied, “I’m really surprised you’re reacting this way.” First, ouch. But after we hung up, I realized I agreed with him—this has been tougher for me than I thought it would be.
If you’re in the same boat, a few findings from the field of disaster psychology might be useful. Research shows that while most people are confident they’d rise to the occasion in a crisis, these predictions rarely match reality. Instead, even routine activities seem difficult. It’s hard to concentrate and make decisions. We feel depressed, guilty, confused, or we want to give up (for more examples, see page 8 of this guide).
Therefore, it is both okay—and completely normal—to feel unmotivated right now. In fact, holding ourselves to a productive pandemic doesn’t just seem impossible, it feels like an act of aggression against ourselves. How could anyone successfully shoulder this amount of existential dread while writing a novel or learning a language or organizing all of their closets?
I think that we urgently need to give ourselves permission to lower the bar. Any day that we get out of bed with a halfway positive attitude and do a halfway decent job of fulfilling our existing responsibilities should be labelled an unequivocal win. There is indeed power in doing what we can.
So in the coming weeks and months, every time a tempting new quarantine goal pops into your head, try asking, “is this reasonable to expect of myself right now?” If the answer is no, let’s try to grant ourselves some grace and let it go.
This is where I think our true invincible summer exists. To discover that our worth is not determined by what we get done during the pandemic. To know that getting through it is enough. To know that we are doing enough. That we are enough.
Dr. Tasha Eurich
is an organizational psychologist, speaker and The New York Times bestselling author of Bankable Leadership. Her latest book, Insight, delves deeper into the meta-skill of the modern world: self-awareness. Tasha’s life’s work is to help organizations succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders and teams. With a ten-year track record in the Fortune 500 world, her expertise has been featured in outlets like The New York Times, Huffington Post, Entrepreneur and Forbes.
