March 24, 2020: The Great Pause

Good morning,

It’s really hard for me to believe that it’s only been one week since the SF Bay Area counties started sheltering in place. In some ways, it feels like an entire lifetime has happened.

It’s hard to know exactly how long we’ll be in this situation, but I recommend planning for at least 8 weeks. If that seems like an eternity, you’re not alone. Now is the time to adjust any WFH habits to ensure you’re able to complete this marathon.

On to the update.

The Great Pause

Open Table’s year over year percent change in restaurant reservations:

And from Mike DP:

Clearly some types of economic activity are falling off a cliff. But how quickly do they recover? It took china 6 weeks longer than normal after this year’s Lunar New Year to get to something like 50% of normal property sales.

You can imagine the other industries that might be seeing similar numbers. Just a few:

• Airlines

• Travel Agencies

• Hotels

• Cruise Ships

• Gyms

• Retail Stores (that aren’t marked as “essential”)

What kind of trickle-down effect does this have? Nobody knows. At the very least, it’s a massive change. And as with any change, there are opportunities to help. If you’re finding yourself handling the WFH load just fine, consider donating your time to an organization that can use your help. For example, I’m helping improve the tech stack for mask-match.com.

Or, if you’re the entrepreneurial sort, perhaps start contemplating what happens as we come out of this. What kinds of opportunities are there now that so many more people have experienced WFH? What kinds of opportunities are there if the local businesses in your neighborhood are struggling? How can you help?

Tool of the day

I really enjoy using Audio Hijack to record conversations (with explicit permission) that I’d like to review later. If you’re using a videoconferencing tool and you just want to record the audio, this is one tool worth considering.

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That’s all for today, now get back to work!

See you tomorrow,

Andrew