Things The Pandemic Taught Us We Can Live Without

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Studies have found people are actually happiest when they break away from their traditional way of doing things. And yet, we really are creatures of habit. We do certain things a certain way because that’s how it’s always been done. Going against the norm or developing a new routine can seem overwhelming, so people get stuck in their patterns. “That’s just the way it is.” How often do you hear that? But why is it like that? There were so many ways humans went about life before the pandemic because nobody stopped to ask, “But is there another way?” or “Is this necessary?” Though it can feel wrong to say something good came out of this widespread health crisis, perhaps it’s worse to say that nothing did and to not acknowledge the positive things that were borne from it. Maybe some of those include all the ways we learned we could do things differently because we had to. Necessity is the mother of innovation and wow did we have to innovate to get through the last year.

Perhaps there were many things that, before the pandemic, you may have said, “I can’t live without that.” But then, you had to and…you survived, didn’t you? Maybe you were even forced to find an alternative way to go about things, and that alternative proved to be better than the original way. Even when we get a handle on this virus and life can return to “normal,” many things might not go back the way they were because we learned a better way. Here are things the pandemic taught us we could live without.

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A 9-to-5 schedule

Maybe the world was already coming around to the silliness of the arbitrary 9-to-5 schedule, but the pandemic really brought the point home. With most professionals working from home and homeschooling kids, getting work done during any set of rigid hours became out of the question. Work got done when it got done and companies didn’t crumble.