Illustration by Chris Gash
Illustration of woman in mask looking at maskless self in mirror
Lisa Hardesty has always had a knack, maybe even a superpower, for organizing social events. So, as soon as her work friends were all vaccinated, she went straight into multitasking mode, scheduling a time when everyone could meet and shopping for a charcuterie board that would be COVID-friendly.
But on the designated day, a Thursday after work, Hardesty opened her refrigerator to grab the ingredients to organize her platter. The meats, olives, and cheeses were missing.
“They had been in the car since Sunday!” she says. “I got so excited about seeing people again that I scheduled—boom, boom, boom—and I was overscheduled and I didn’t listen to my own lessons about what I’d learned. I’m realizing I’ve lost my touch—and I don’t want it back.”
Hardesty is a clinical health psychologist at the Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato, and she’s keenly aware that her recent frazzled and irritable mood probably signaled that she was not heeding her own advice about following the lessons she’s learned from the pandemic.
“One of the lessons I learned is how important it was to slow down, to be more in the moment, to focus on close family and friends,” she says. “It’s important to have more quiet time, more reflection time and time to restore. Isn’t it nice not to have a full calendar?”
For most of us, the pandemic represented a year of hardship and suffering and isolation. Those difficult experiences taught us a lot, local psychologists say, and many of those lessons can be applied to our regular lives. Successfully incorporating all the things we learned can be challenging, as Hardesty can attest. So, we tapped three experts in the psychology of family and friends, parenting, and work to get their take on what lessons we should take with us into the more normal times ahead—and how to do it.
Family and Friends
Everyone will have their own takeaways, Hardesty says, but she’s noticed some common themes:
“People figured out which friends are in their corner and who they want to spend time with,” Hardesty says.
Often, she says, they’re people with shared values. Even after we forget about pandemic pods, keep those friends close, she advises, and be mindful of the time you spend with people who draw you into negative mindsets.
Many households, including Hardesty’s, finally had time for the formerly elusive family dinner. (My own family had so many meals together that one of my teenagers said she missed eating in the car between sports and extracurricular activities.) That bonus time together proved to be a gift that helped us understand how critical it is and inspired us to keep it going.
People also learned to redefine what is essential: Suddenly, your purses, shoes, and cars became so much less important, Hardesty says. And entire professions that were taken for granted were finally appreciated.
“We really realized how important health care providers and teachers are,” Hardesty says. Service workers, too, are finally getting some of the recognition they deserve.
The charcuterie incident helped Hardesty recommit to her plans to follow her own tips:
- Reflect on your own lessons learned and write them down: “That’s where to start. Write them down, and identify which ones will be the most crucial and which I want to uphold.”
- Make a plan of action: Pick one thing to focus on and put it in your calendar. “I like the saying ‘You don’t have to boil the ocean.’ Pick those things you can start with and act upon.”
- Recognize the challenge and stay resourceful: “There’s a strong tendency to go back to old stuff. You really have to be intentional to not do that.” In order to avoid reverting, take another lesson that we probably all learned from surviving a pandemic. “Some of our worst fears came true, and we navigated through it. The lesson learned is that we are resourceful.”
Parenting
At the beginning of the pandemic, Kevin Coleman’s 7-year-old daughter asked him to draw her a chalk track on their driveway so she could scooter around it.
“She rode for hours,” he says. It’s one example of many that probably wouldn’t have happened in normal life. Working from home also gave Coleman the opportunity to spend more time with his just-turned-1-year-old.
As a licensed clinical child psychologist at Children’s Minnesota, Coleman hopes that parents like him continue finding ways to connect meaningfully with their kids.
“The risk in non-COVID times is to look past those opportunities to engage with kids. My hope is that families have begun to pay attention to their kids’ desires to express themselves through games or toys, that parents are more available for that,” he says.
A natural extension of spending more time together, he adds, can be “the reduction of emphasis on material things compared to experiences. When you think about kids who are so much less exposed to the grocery store or Target or the mall now, who were forced to come up with creative ideas within the four walls of their home or yard, to have shared experiences rather than the pursuit of some new thing—I hope that stays.”
In normal times, though, it doesn't usually happen spontaneously. For Coleman to keep that up when he’s not working from home, he builds it into his day. The hour and a half after his workday are devoted to his 7-year-old. The key is to let the kid be in charge so that the time is focused on play rather than talk. He’s gained insights into his daughter’s social life that he wouldn’t have by simply asking questions, he says.
“There’s a strong tendency to go back to old stuff. You really have to be intentional to not do that.”
Lisa Hardesty
Another opportunity, he says, is to model positive ways of responding to adversity. Once you’ve made sure your family is safe, “maybe the second thing is to begin to look out at the community and make sure the people around you are doing OK. Helping others can help give meaning to those moments and control anxiety, so check in with a neighbor who lives alone or help other people make or find appointments for vaccination.”
Another advantage to increasing the parent-child time? It could offset some of the effects that isolation and excessive screen time may have had on your kid.
Work
“This is the perfect time to rethink work and what you need from it,” says Theresa Glomb, a professor at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.
For many people, work life has changed dramatically over the past year. So, before everyone heads back to 9–5 at the office, Glomb encourages individual employees and company leaders to reflect on what COVID has taught them about optimizing work.
“There’s an opportunity for prioritizing and becoming intentional about the work that’s being done, an opportunity to think about the work and how it happens, who does it, and where it happens,” she says.
Working remotely was already trending pre-pandemic, she points out, and COVID both accelerated the trend and provided proof that employees can be productive through remote work. Companies can think creatively to take advantage of productivity from workers who excel at home by encouraging flexible work schedules.
A new work life could lead to a better balance for everyone, she says, by blending the best aspects of in-person offices with the best aspects of remote offices. For example, teams could create office hours for each employee so that everyone would know that a colleague has scheduled downtime on Thursdays between 10 and 2, during which spontaneous meetings are welcome. Or they could ban Zoom meetings on Wednesdays and reserve those hours for deep work (Citigroup has declared Fridays to be Zoom-free). On the flip side, companies might choose to preserve some elements of face-to-face technology, say, for global meetings or happy hours.
And at the individual level, we should all take time to reflect about what practices work best for us, what we want to preserve and what we want to ditch from the past year, she says. For some people who thrive on structure and boundaries, that may mean going back to the office full time. For others, it may mean continuing remote work but adding routines that help separate work and home life: “I know people who get in their car, get a coffee, and go home” to make a clear transition, she says.
Whatever you put in place needs to be sustainable for your well-being, Glomb advises.
“You know the phrase ‘You’re not working from home; you’re living at work.’ If it feels like you’re living at work, that’s going to be problematic.”
Make sure to incorporate the social lessons as well, she says. Everyone benefits from “a happy, healthy, whole employee.”
