digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: Avoid making big, long-term decisions during a crisis when you are driven by fear, anger, or anxiety, and make them only when you feel well and calm. The speaker also argues that a disruption to routine can be used to start new projects, learning, and acts of goodness that everyday life rarely allows.
Key Points
- Rash choices, such as jumping into intimate relationships for quick comfort, can have long-term costs, so pause on any decision with lasting consequences.
- A crisis breaks routine and can free people, families, and organizations to try new approaches in work, learning, and spirituality.
- The speaker's example is people who used reduced commuting and workload to study Torah and learn to read Hebrew, which they had long wanted to do.
- Organizations have expanded online learning, now reaching more people than before.
- The speaker argues that universities should move online more, and that online education could give everyone access to the best teachers at low cost.
- A short crisis can bring out goodness, with more volunteering and creative help for people who are isolated or in need.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions:
- Pause and think through any decision with long-term consequences before acting.
- Do not make decisions from fear or anger.
- Make big, long-term, consequential decisions only when you feel you are in a place of well-being and calm, and use your reasoning to analyze the situation.
- Use reduced routine or free time to pursue things you have long wanted to do, such as studying Torah or learning Hebrew.
- Look for ways to help others, such as teaching guitar lessons, running free gym classes, calling older people, or delivering things to people who need them.
- The speaker frames the crisis as temporary, and says its length depends on how long lasting behavioral changes take. He suggests weeks would likely lead back to offices, while months could change how people prefer to work.
- He predicts pressure on universities over cost if online learning continues, but also notes that people may discover a continued need for in-person social experiences.
- He says the cost of globally delivered online education would be low if many people contributed small amounts, and calls government the institution that could solve it.
Bottom Line
A crisis can be a window for positive change, but major decisions are safer when made from calm rather than fear.
