Walking Diary

By Hsu Shen On

Corona Diary: Steer into the skid

May 2020 · 2 minute read

I was watching a TWiT podcast and one guest, Amy Webb, explained a new concept(to me) which I found very interesting. She called it ‘Steer into the skid’, which I later found is a saying people use.

She explained that if there is uncertainty we should not do what the initial normal reaction would be, and just try to stop immediately and try to return to normal. But instead to try to lean into the problem and accept the issue, and adjust accordingly and find a new way to deal with it.

Like if you are driving and suddenly hit an icy road and start to skid. A normal reaction would be to put the brake and stop immediately. This may make things worse but instead what you should do is, let it skid and try to slowly steer towards the road.

She said this in the context of the Coronavirus issue the whole world is facing currently. She explains that it is a wrong idea to just want to get everything back to normal. Currently a lot of countries have been in severe lockdown mode for a long period, and because of that economy has suffered badly. So a lot of people are getting restless and want the businesses to open up again.

This time we should not just try to go back to normal, business as usual. The better solution is to try and find a new solution( a new way of living), accept that this will go on for a year or more, and find a new way to cope with this. Once we accept the problem then we can start working towards a creative solution even though it would not meet our demand to get back to normal. We all must accept the new normal.

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