Brace yourself.
Over the next couple of weeks your news and social media feeds will be assaulted by articles like this:
‘What I learnt from working through a pandemic in 2020’
‘Ten predictions for business in 2021’
’368 important lessons from COVID-19 in 2020’
‘The 10 Biggest Business Trends For 2021 Everyone Must Be Ready For’
Actually this last one is out there already on Forbes, and includes such groundbreaking insights as ‘lots of people will be working from home’ and ‘we’ll be automating stuff’.
Hold the front page.
But this ridiculous year feels like it needs some kind of wrap up to end on. (Preferably with industrial-strength duct tape so it can never be reopened.)
So instead of same old resolutions, shaky predictions or blah blah lessons, I’ll just share some of my best and worst bits of the year:
The good bits to carry joyously into 2021
- the normalisation of elasticated waistbands, previously only enjoyed by toddlers and pregnant women
- sharing the, often hilarious, realities of family life whilst at work (during one meeting a client hurriedly turned off his camera and typed in the Zoom chatbox ‘Toddler’s just done a poo! Back in 5’)
- fascinating conversations with clients about kids, families, aging relatives, loneliness, burnout and more (and feeling lucky to work with so many wonderful people)
- Friday night margaritas and mail-order bacon on Saturday mornings (yes, the two are connected)
The rubbish bits to sacrifice to the 2020 dumpster fire, never to be talked of again
- COVID clichés like ‘unprecedented’, ‘reaching out’ and ‘strange and difficult times’ (Eva Wiseman writes about this so wittily for The Guardian here)
- Zoom quizzes (turns out I still don’t care who came second in the 1970 World Cup)
- Robotic emails from faceless CEOs assuring me they were here for me (surprisingly my printer ink supplier was not the confidante I needed)
- Sharing my home office with my husband, children and cats. Well, maybe the cats can stay.
So that’s my year. How was yours?
What do you want to take into next year? And what will you hurl into the bin?
