Life skills, for when life is interrupted
DIYOL is the new must-have ability
- Dateline
- 20 May 2022
Now that we have a vaccine for coronavirus, life has morphed into a new normal. But one thing is clear: we will not forget. One of the many lessons we learned is that Do It Yourself on Location (DIYOL) is the skill we should all be mastering.
Restaurant dinners with friends are resuming and hotels are slowly filling back up, but on an individual level, a large chunk of household spending is being dedicated to increasing future resilience and prepping for the unexpected.
The first lockdowns in 2020 showed us how dire it was when UberEATS wasn’t allowed to deliver fast food and restaurant favourites. There’s been a surge in demand for cooking classes, with a focus on frozen ingredients, non-perishables and preserving. Now we have drone deliveries, but consumers are still not bargaining only on that to keep their families fed.
With some countries closing pubs and liquor stores for lockdown, desktop gin distilleries and homebrew beer contraptions have seen a huge increase in popularity. Craft distilling is more art than skill, but invaluable when there’s no drink to be had at any price.
Those who thought they were going to lose their minds without a haircut for two months, have vowed never to let that happen again. Couples and roommates are teaming up to be Clip-and-Cut Buddies and they’re getting together on the weekends to learn from a professional hairdresser how to do a basic trim.
Innovative new appliances have been filling ecommerce carts. Need to relieve the stress? There’s a robotic masseuse for that. At-home diagnostic test kits that can tell you whether you really need a doctor or just some aspirin? Pricey, but on the shelf, yes. And who can forget the original Zoom Doom fatigue, when your eyes glaze over? Not anymore; holographic VR video calls with haptic touch for the home are launching soon.
There’s one more skill you need to master. Now is also a good time to build your social capital. You never know when you will need to trade a bottle of homemade gin for your neighbour’s 3D printer, the next time life is interrupted!
Links to related stories
- What I Learned From Trying to Cut My Own Hair – Bloomberg, 5 April 2020
- How the covid-19 pandemic is changing Americans’ spending habits – Economist, 9 April 2020
- Chinese consumers are thinking twice about their post-coronavirus spending – Quartz, 6 April 2020
- MINDBULLET: Hello, Generation V (Dateline: 19 March 2023)
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