All quiet on the western front

There’s a lot of opinions going back and forth on the current situation. The Surgeon General said over the weekend that this will be the most critical week raising concerns that the death toll could be over 100,000 once all said and done. Today, the CDC said the death toll could be much less.

I don’t really know what to believe at this point. Based on what I’ve seen, the optimist in me is starting to think that we’re going to start seeing things going back to normal in early May, but then some really smart people telling me that they see this going on for many more months.

I understand the need to err on the side of caution as lives are at stake, but on the other hand you can’t just completely ignore the impact this has on the economy and therefore peoples’ jobs and businesses. It’s an insanely difficult decision and I’m just happy I don’t have to be the person to make it.

While I wait this out like the rest of America, I couldn’t help but think that things are all quiet on the western front. My inbox is as quiet as I’ve seen it on a Tuesday. People are generally in less of a rush nowadays.

Perhaps people are realizing the potential severity of the situation and taking more time to prioritize family and work-life balance. Maybe working from home has forced people to have more focus on work-life balance. Very likely it’s a mix of both.

There’s never a shortage of things to do in startup land. I wouldn’t call the last 3 weeks pleasant from a work standpoint by any means, but I’ll admit that it has been nice to have a bit of quiet so I can catch-up on a lot of internal projects.

I realize that these times won’t last. We’ll go back to the typical startup frenzy sooner than later, but I’ll be sure to enjoy this time to get caught up on things. Soon enough we’ll go back to the hectic days of office searches, candidate interviews, and meetings at companies and we’ll miss these few weeks/months that we had where things were all quiet.