I’ve been a doctor for around 40 years. I was in the USA during the AIDS epidemic and Reagan’s war on drugs. I’ve treated patients with H1N1, SARS and MERS and I can safely say I’ve never seen anything like COVID-19.
We’re still learning about this virus and the best way to fight it. There has been a lot of suffering but it’s amazing to see how citizens have stepped up. Volunteers are organizing food and help for the elderly, animal lovers are setting out food and water for strays, apartments are organizing collections for the local dhobis and gardeners, and everyone is trying to their bit to help. I was touched to see the number of people who came out to cheer and clap (while maintaining the appropriate distance) for essential service and healthcare workers a few weeks ago. It is also heart-warming to see how the public and private sector have come together to fight this disease.
While we wait to see its impact on our health and economy, all of us are learning to navigate the new normal. The lockdown has given me time to introspect and forced me to change the way I structure my day. Here are a few things I’ve learned:
Essential meetings are rarer than I thought
Like everyone else, I have been re-evaluating my definition of essential. I was flying from one important meeting to the next crucial one, preparing for them on the plane. Then the virus struck and all flights were grounded. Meetings, where I was deemed essential, happened without me and the work still managed to get done. Video-conferencing and teleconferencing help streamline meetings by cutting down on the small talk. I’ve also reduced my carbon footprint which has made my daughters (and the planet) happy.
Time spent planning is still time spent
Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” When I transitioned into a management role, I began to embrace this philosophy and planning started taking up most of my day. We planned meetings to plan more meetings. We made 5-year plans, annual plans, monthly plans, and daily plans. We dedicated so much time (and vast resources) to planning and forecasting. Now the plans are irrelevant and the time is still gone. While I still believe in the importance of planning, I will adopt a more balanced approach and allocate more time for just “doing”.
Trusting the common man’s common sense
We put so much faith in complex data modelling, expert opinions, and forecasts that we fail to understand there is a limit to how much we can predict. I do believe that many a time too much of analysis can cause paralysis of decision making. I recently read a fascinating book called Dance with Chance by Makridakis, Hogarth and Gaba. It explores how the illusion of control “fools us into thinking the future is more predictable and less uncertain than it really is”. They illustrate how giving up the illusion increases the actual amount of control we have.
In my experience, experts sometimes get bogged down by the minutiae and they may miss the forest for the trees. People especially planners have an outsized belief in how much they can predict and control. The book explores many interesting studies like “Why investment portfolios created by blindfolded monkeys throwing darts at stock listings often outperform portfolios created by professional money-managers” and “Why countries that control their economies through central planning fare worse than those who don’t”.
This is not to say that you should disregard expert opinion or that feelings are a good substitute for facts. There are many things experts have studied and perfected. We have indisputable proof that vaccinations and immunisation drives (or in this case social distancing and hand hygiene) save lives. My observation is merely that the higher up the career ladder you go, the more hubris you seem to acquire. We believe that our privileges and advancements are due to our own talents and hard work, and we forget about the importance of luck. For me, this crisis has been a humbling reminder that plans don’t always work out as intended. I’m working to acknowledge my fallibility (my wife has graciously volunteered to help) and to do as much as I can within my sphere of control.
The cloud of Corona in addition to causing a lot of hardship hopefully will bring in the silver lining of learning to live gracefully with uncertainty and coping with the unknown.
The author is Chairman, Manipal Hospitals & President, Nathealth
