lockdown learning: #12 An ironic trade-off

A short series of 2 minute observations…

For almost all of us at the moment, our biggest health headache is Covid-19. Especially those of us of an older disposition are seeking to avoid meeting the virus.

However, we are also of a generation that grew up being told year-in-year-out that smoking was really bad for your health: something that will impact not just your lungs and throat but also your heart -reducing your life expectancy and increasing your morbidity.

Smoking is a key cause of COPD, one of the big risk factors for the seriousness of Covid-19. As a result, in the face of the virus, both UK and US governments have stepped up their advice to give up smoking.

It is therefore somewhat ironic that quite a number of scientific studies seem to suggest that smoking may actually protect you from Covid-19!

The evidence is not definitive. But in the USA, France and China, where many adults smoke, the number of hospital admittances are heavily skewed to non-smokers. In multiple studies in China the proportions are 6.5% vs 26.6%. In the US,  in a study by America’s Centers for Disease Control,  for 7,000 people who tested positive for coronavirus, they discovered that only 1.3% were smokers vs 14% of the population.

These sort of results prompted Professor Francois Balloux,(UCL) to say that ‘the evidence for a protective effect of smoking (or nicotine) against COVID-19 is bizarrely strong… actually far stronger than for any drug trialled at this stage…’

There is even an understanding of how this might be the case – as both virus and smoking interact with the ACE-2 receptors which play a critical role in the infection.

This suggests a question – is it safer to smoke or not smoke at the moment?

Its an ironic question but a great example of a popular economics concept – a trade-off (and probably one a better statistician than I could answer at least in a probabilistic manner).

In this case the trade-off seems to be between short and long term. In the short term (before I become addicted and my health badly damaged) I might be better off smoking to protect myself from Covid-19 . However, if I avoid the virus and do not give up quickly I am likely to be killed and my health battered in the long term.

What will I do? … probably stick to not smoking.

I am sure I am with the majority. Even though, as perhaps our most famous economist, Keynes said, “in the long run we are all dead”, the high probability of the health impact of smoking is much greater than the low probability that I will get a serious dose of Covid-19.

… I hope.

Lockdown learning: #11 Choices and consequences

A short series of 2 minute observations…

I like having choices… but not always the consequences!

As we hit week 14 of lockdown I am reminded of how what seem like local choices that have led to our current situation.

How does hygiene in a Chinese market come to have such a profound impact on the whole world? Such small actions have led to a pandemic that has impacted the whole human race.

It is a stark reminder of our interdependence in this world. We live in a web of cause and effect and our choices shape this for good or ill or both!

Sometimes we like it: wielding a golf club successfully; when we make a job choice that works out well or hold that BBQ on a sunny day (rather than the adjacent wet ones).

Sometimes we don’t: when we carelessly drop a knife and damage our nice wooden floor ☹️ . When we don’t allow enough distance between us and the parked car and break a door mirror.  When we rely on someone and they let us down.

Bad consequences normally mean pain and hurt which we don’t like. We try to avoid them. Yet they play an essential role – feedback to help us to learn how to live and to stay healthy. Indeed there is a lot of evidence we rarely change our behaviour unless it stings or hurts – physically or verbally. A muscle twinge warns us off more serious damage. A bruised ego can  lead us to better decisions. The absence of this is disastrous: lepers become maimed, disfigured and can die simply because leprosy stops them feeling pain and infection in their bodies.

We rely on consequences. Our society and world would not work without them – but sometimes they are scary and often they are more significant and interrelated than we realise. Many things can’t be undone.

I love the story about archaeologists researching the Dead Sea scrolls. They realised locals had known about the caves containing these scrolls for years – fragments of parchment were all over the place. So they offered money in exchange for each piece of paper handed in and the locals obliged …with lots of pieces, many  ripped from bigger bits to earn more of a reward!

Good choices come from owning consequences – even if we make mistakes. That can be tough but its a big incentive to think round our decisions, look ahead and consider possible consequences – to people, events and our own options and wellbeing.

As I write this Siberia is experiencing temperatures 20-25 degrees above normal. Yet another consequence in a system reacting to our choices and actions.

Our ability to choose is a great gift but definitely one to be used wisely.

In big and little choices, we can often get what we choose but not what we really want.

Lockdown learning: #10 too much of a good thing…

A short series of 2 minute observations…

A consequence of lockdown is too much time on-line. The result is that you end up reading things that normally you wouldn’t bother with (…like this blog!). On-line feeds, facebook or linkedin offer a  snippet… and you decide to take a look.

But the articles that tend to be featured and clicked most are those of the ‘how to identify a smart person in 3 minutes’ or the ‘6 phrases that managers need to avoid in team meetings’ variety.

These are click candy but my lockdown time has reemphasised that I have reached a stage in my life when I don’t need these articles. In fact I think I reached this point sometime ago. Yet it is not because I don’t need to learn more, even about some of the topics.

It is that  another list of things to do when I get up or when I am at this or that task. Nope – it doesn’t work it is  impossible. I don’t have the time, memory or energy.  They simply become another thing I am not doing ‘properly’. My daily bucket is full.

I would need to run them like my bookcase – one in ~ one out. But then which one would I get rid of? My ‘8 tips for handling difficult people’? or my ’10 ways to stay fit and healthy’? It presents impossible trade-offs!(…back to my ‘5 ways to stay stress free’).

Life is not a game of performance, a series of tasks done well. Learning cannot be added by a new list in my knowledge base.

A simple checklist helps when you have a specific issue to address but too many is too much.

To learn I need to think. This needs a framework to integrate new lessons or even reminders into. I have to hook into that understanding and that is easier with clear overall goals into which understanding and insight can fit.

This normally means something longer and more considered than your average key points article.

What does help me?

Most useful – an in-depth piece on a subject,  or well-crafted case examples that I can mull on  or articles that offer an entirely different perspective on a topic. These are much rarer. Sometimes they help reshape my thinking but more often they let me act like a seagull at the beach – swoop in on a tasty morsel which is easy to integrate in my ways of thinking and working.

These build up the structure of understanding not just fill in some tactics.

Not so many articles seem to do that.

That’s another book then.

Lockdown learning: #9 Freedom is …what exactly?

A short series of 2 minute observations…

How are you feeling?

We are living with a lot of restrictions on our way of life at the moment. They arrived all of a sudden. Pubs, restaurants and coffee shops have closed. Public transport is largely deserted. Travel abroad or overnight stays are nearly impossible. Sport is highly restricted. Many things that we took for granted before are simply not possible now.

The tension is rising further as we approach the summer season and it becomes clear that we may not get our holiday – especially to foreign parts. No short burst of freedom from our routine of work, travel, home etc. It serves to underline the sense of imprisonment. Michael McIntyre captures the scale of  impact humorously  in a recent sketch.

We are more constrained – less able to please ourselves.  Our lives have diminished. We cannot do a lot of things that we were able to do in February. Our freedom – if that means doing whatever we want – has reduced. We are less free than we were.

Or are we?

When I look around, life is, in some respects, more like life in the 1970’s – air travel volumes, local traffic patterns, numbers walking, no meals out and no coffee shops. It is a lot quieter and with that some new freedoms have appeared. Things that were difficult to do before are now a lot easier or better – walking, cycling, working (without having to waste time travelling). There is less pressure on sartorial and presentational standards. More allowance for ‘where you are’ as a person.  We have more ‘time’ and less demands.

This highlights one of the funny things about being human: We live inside ourselves and perceive the outside through our senses. How we respond depends on what goes on in our minds and not solely on what is happening beyond our bodies.

So, yes, there is a narrower range of activities that we can do but freedom is first and foremost in our minds.

We can be just as ‘free’ in ourselves now as we were before but only when we own our position and our choices. That is ultimately freedom. Freedom makes a choice. It is not driven to seek the unfulfillable. It doesn’t howl at the moon. It faces reality and chooses to do from what it can do – indeed the best thing.  It adapts to make the most of the situation and chooses with wisdom.

In doing this, we take responsibility for ourselves and are as free as we can be.

But as Sigmund Freud observed, “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

Lockdown learning: #8 Marriage glue

A short series of 2 minute observations

The lockdown has put a lot of pressure on households. We are seeing a lot more of whoever it is we are living with.

Sadly, we are at our most unguarded with those who know us well and so we are often cruel as well as kind – revealing our flawed nature.

It can be very bad. In Britain, calls to the domestic violence helpline have risen by 50% and the domestic murder rate has more than doubled! I fully expect that as lockdown eases and people can begin to move on, we will see an uptick in separations and divorces.

I know many things put relationships under strain – no space (physically and psychologically); external pressures – money worries, sickness, bereavements; internal pressures – boredom and frustration; divergent  needs, food likes, love languages or activities.

I feel fortunate – I really like my wife and we get on well (and we have many rooms!) Spending time together is no hardship at all but it still requires us to build rather than damage our relationship, if we are to emerge successfully out the other side of the pandemic.

So if we all know what creates the tensions in relationships – what is the glue?

What do we need to do, to build rather than break relationships in the current circumstances?

I am sure all of us will have our own preconceptions based on our experience. However, as a fan of data I was very taken by an article that highlighted the statistical importance (~94%) of kindness and respect in everyday living…

You are watching TV when your partner wants your attention (e.g. something they are reading, something that needs to go on the to do list, sorting a date). What do you do? Do you ignore them, groan or turn your attention to them?

It’s a real, daily call to put a priority on the other person.

Your response to these ‘bids’ for attention signals how likely your relationship is to prosper. Respond positively to 1 in 3 and the odds are pretty low that you will make it to the long term, 9 in 10 and the future is golden. Its your choice.

9 in 10? This level of respect makes good events great, reinforces the value both place on the relationship and reduces conflicts to fights (not war). In the end, it is kindness which is apparently, but perhaps not surprisingly, the glue. So says the Love Lab and Gottman Institute in NY.

Maybe Tolstoy’s quote from Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” is true only about the symptoms not the causes.

and maybe I need to keep my batting average up…