Ask HN: What Covid Lifestyle Changes Are Permanent for You? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What Covid Lifestyle Changes Are Permanent for You?

12 points11thEarlOfMar14 comments

During the pandemic lockdown, I was relegated to cutting my own hair. I surprised myself and actually, I like the look and the time and money savings. I don't think I'll be going back to the barber.

That makes me wonder what other changes people have made that they will stick with. A lot of folks picked up hobbies, video games became even more prevalent, some people grew gardens. Some of those changes were likely just made to kill time and solve boredom and loneliness and once the restrictions are lifted, many will returm to the life they enjoyed pre-pandemic.

What changes will stick with you?

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- Going all-in on remote / distributed work. Even pre-2020, most of my client work already happened in a remote / online setting. However, there were still clients who demanded long-term on-site presence for various reasons. I won't work with clients anymore for whom that's a hard requirement. Apart from the obvious and well-known benefits of distributed work, not leveraging distributed work is detrimental to a company's overall culture and efficiency because a presence culture and presenteeism foster bad habits such as excessive meetings and a reliance on synchronous communication and oral tradition.

I will gladly help businesses that want to make the transition to distributed work, though.

- Going nearly everywhere by bike. Pre-Covid, not having owned a car for years, I mostly used public transport, which can be quite stressful at times due to delays and cancelled journeys. I had almost forgotten how much freedom and agency a bike affords you.

- Wearing a mask in case I still have to use public transport (e.g., for longer journeys). I don't need to catch the flu or even the common cold either, if I can avoid it.

- Daily at-home workouts.

- Having my hair cut by my wife (who's a dog groomer so she at least knows her way around scissors ;-) ).

- Purchasing nearly everything online, including groceries.

Masking up on transit. Along with learning about subway air quality, I don't think there's ever going to be a flu season where I don't wear a KN95 mask on a train.

Optimizing grocery shopping to minimize the number of visits per year. It’s not that difficult to meal plan and shop for longer periods of time.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to getting back to normal ASAP.

- Walking a lot more instead of taking the tramway.

- Masking on buses and trains even when not required.

- Normalizing skipping a bus if it feels too crowded.

- Refusing to work in an office again.

I’ve always ran but thanks to less commute time I’ve been running longer and more often. I suspect I’ll keep doing that after COVID.

Also while my wife video called her friends regularly before COVID, I never have. I started video calling my friends and I liked it enough to try keep doing it for friends that I don’t see often due to geographic reasons.

Juggling! I took up juggling by chance, because I was bored by traditional exercising. It's way more fun!

How did you learn? Thanks.

I learned three ball juggling as a kid thusly:

- with two balls in one hand, toss the ball closest to your fingers up and let the rear ball roll forward

- be able to catch the just tossed ball (or bag, or fruit) in the rear of your palm, where the other ball just rolled from

- be able to do this repeatedly in each hand. You are juggling two balls with one hand.

- now just pass the tossed ball between hands and you are juggling three balls

Going to restaurants less often. Meals cooked at home are tasting better and can still be a great experience. I control what goes in to the dish, it’s fun to prepare and I get to try new things. Also, having groceries delivered is kinda’ nice.

Cutting my hair takes longer than having it cut. I do plan to continue, except maybe for special occasions. My WFH is ending soon, so that's not something I can continue.

Other than that, not much has changed for me.

Cutting my own hair has been big for me. It's much cheaper and I don't have to wait in any of the queues that most haircut places have started adopting. And if I mess up, I just wear a hat

With a trimmer, surely?

Absolutely. I have some hair scissors for around my ears but that's about it

I use food delivery (grocery and meal) far more than I used to.

We really need a competitor for Instacart, BTW.

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