What if we told you in 2022 you’re going to be fitter, happier, richer, and less overworked.
What if we said come next summer you’ll be stress-free, beach-bound,
and feeling like a million bucks from working your new four-day workweek?
You are going to bounce back from these years of pandemic tribulations, and here’s why.
As we write this, the news headlines are looking slightly apocalyptic again with that horrible
Greek name of “omicron” spilling out of every news website. But as vaccination rates increase and
people get natural immunity, many scientists now say that 2022 will be the year the pandemic ends.
As an epidemiologist working for the World Health Organization said, “We think between
now and the end of 2022, this is the point where we get control over this virus.” Yep, it won’t
suddenly disappear, but by getting control that scientist means COVID won’t be anywhere
near as dangerous next year as it is this year. The scientist said the prediction right now is
that come the latter part of ’22, 70 percent of the world’s population will be vaccinated. She
added, “If we reach that target, we will be in a very, very different situation epidemiologically.”
This is what an Australian scientist told The Guardian newspaper about that:
“Being fully vaccinated against Covid protects you from getting severe disease, yes, but it doesn’t
completely protect you from getting Covid. So if you are someone with chronic health conditions,
what might be a mild disease or mild infection in a young person or a person who is in good health,
will have a greater impact on you.” But there’s good news here. That is,
there are now reports that tell us while many people did unhealthy things at the start of the
pandemic, such as eating too much and drinking so much their blood was part-Smirnoff, more and
more people have now become health-conscious. Many of us have started to cook healthier meals
during the pandemic to cure our boredom. This has led to a big boost in healthy eating across the
world. The home fitness craze also meant those who used to go to the gym before the pandemic
now worked out at home, and those who didn’t go to the gym at all gave working out a try.
So privately many of us are bouncing back big style,
but that won’t do anything to improve the economy. But many experts are now saying the economy will
also bounce back and things will be looking much better in many countries come the middle of 2022.
The World Bank reported this year, “A year and a half since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic,
the global economy is poised to stage its most robust post-recession recovery in 80 years.”
The problem is that this bounce back will be uneven across the world,
but one financial expert said the world economy is set to “boom”
adding that there will be a “reversal in fortune” that “will benefit all regions of the world.”
Morgan Stanley said this boom will be led by the USA which will see a 5.9 percent growth in gross
domestic product. China, it forecasts, will see a whopping 9 percent growth, and across
the European Union, a 5 percent growth. The UK, India, and Japan can also expect a bit of growth.
It might seem strange to hear that such growth will happen so quickly. US News reported one of
the reasons for this is, “The recession brought on by COVID-19 was not a financial crisis or the
result of economic imbalances, as many prior recessions were.” The IMF said our excellent
response to the collapse in 2020 has led to “multi-speed recoveries around the world.”
But you might be sitting there watching this video and thinking, ok, sure,
but how will that make my life better? When we hear about economic growth it’s not enough to
give us immediate positive effects. Well, one thing that looks set to
happen is you will work less for the same amount of money. We kid you not.
As you know, many people worked from home during the pandemic. Something that has come out of that
is workers are now saying they can get more done at home. They don’t need the office.
The BBC says this will very likely further change what they stated as a “radical transformation
in the workplace”. Come 2022, you might be expected not to work five days a week but
four. The article said, “A commonality across all models is that you’re not cramming your
previous work span into a shorter timeframe, like working 40 hours in four days; you are removing a
portion of your total work time for the week. Most importantly, salaries remain the same.”
We now know we can get work done in less time but we also know that being stressed and overworked
is not good for our health. Also, it would seem pretty contradictory of governments to tell us
to work our butts off when for two years they’ve been telling us to protect ourselves from illness.
Some experts are now saying we can improve and become “more productive,
healthier and happier” by working less. The focus now more than ever is on a good work-life balance,
but will companies be up for reducing your hours? They might be when they read the research that
says people work slower and do worse work when they work more hours, so when they have fewer
hours on the job they actually perform better. You will probably love a guy named John Trougakos,
who’s the associate professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto.
The reason you’ll dig this guy is that he’d been saying that humans aren’t made to work
eight hours straight. He said, “You’re stretching people’s attention over a long period of time,
which is hard for them to do. Thus, they’re going to be less effective.”
Other research talks about something called “cyberloafing” which we admit was a new expression
for us. It basically means that people in the office or in other work environments
spend quite a bit of their time looking at their phones and doing things like checking Facebook.
Some studies said at worst, people spend 2.5 hours a day at work cyberloafing.
Even if you are very conscientious about your work output, studies say you’ll still spend at
least three hours a week messing around with tech that’s not work-related. Hey, we bet some
of you watching this are currently being paid to do something else. You naughty, viewer, you.
Another thing we learned as people started working from home is all the time saved
from not having to do things like having those pointless daily meetings where everyone wants
to talk but doesn’t really have anything to say. We now know so much time is wasted in the office.
On top of that, we save tons of cash from not traveling to work. The average Londoner spends
a whopping £122 a month commuting to work. That’s about $160. This is only if they live
in the city. It’s almost three times more if they live outside. The website Flex Jobs said in
the US the average cost of commuting per year is $2,000 to $5,000. This cash could soon be saved.
But would doing fewer hours negatively affect your business if you own one?
Maybe some of you watching this actually employ people and you are not keen on
reducing your employees’ hours. Well, there was a study undertaken in Iceland which tracked the
productivity of office workers from 2015 to 2019. Those workers didn’t get a day off, only half a
day off per week. They were paid the same. The study showed that people actually did
more work. The BBC wrote, “In the Reykjavík accountancy department, workers processed
6.5 percent more invoices once they started working fewer hours; at a police station,
meanwhile, the shorter workweek didn’t negatively affect the number of investigative cases closed.”
People working fewer hours for the same pay is not a pipe dream. There are numerous studies now
telling us fewer hours can actually be positive for the business, and with it, people’s happiness,
health, and well-being improve. So, if that’s not good news,
we don’t know what is. We are now more health-conscious.
Our employers are seeing we work better when we are not overworked.
Our governments can’t exactly now start expecting us to work to the point of stress after locking
us down for so long. The world is changing. With less work stress in our lives, we can
actually expect to get healthier. Studies have shown that long workdays can lead to overeating
and obesity, and also increase our consumption of drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes.
One major study that looked at 194 countries in the world found that
there were 745,000 attributable deaths to longer work hours, saying a hard day at
the office gave workers more risk of having a stroke or getting some form of heart disease.
Back in 1930, John Maynard Keynes said that when technology improves, we will work less.
Just as Karl Marx thought, improved technology will at some point mean
humans won’t have to work as hard and we’ll be able to flourish and write poems all day.
It hasn’t happened yet, but right now there is an evolution going on in artificial intelligence.
Even before we were struck by the virus, the media was telling us that the “rise of the
robots” could lead to an easier work life. Think tanks back then were saying automation
in the workplace will lead to fewer hours on the job. Well, 2022 would be the ideal time to start.
Tech pundits are now saying things like, “In 2022, automation will accelerate.”
Next year, experts say automation will be the biggest trend in technology. Many companies
now even have “automation mandates”. While before the pandemic, cynics were saying that
when tasks get more automated people will be fired or expected to do other tasks,
post-pandemic we know that companies will very likely be on board with giving workers a break.
What will we do with all this free time? The word on the street is that the summer
of 2022 will be when we’ll stop hearing horror stories about the pandemic.
It will be like a summer of love and folks can finally feel assured that the bad news of the
last couple of years is behind them for good. No doubt we’ll be overjoyed by the smallest
things, such as partying wherever we want or not being told we have to wear a mask
in 7-Eleven to buy some milk, but one thing we are all looking forward to is traveling again.
With your new stress-free job and your new healthy lifestyle, you’ll be ready to spread your wings.
As we write this, the media is saying, “The 2022 international travel outlook is rosier than ever.”
The travel website Expedia said that 37 percent of American people going on vacation in 2022
won’t just go somewhere in the country but will go abroad. In terms of travel, it’s going to be
a busy year for Americans. Countries will finally be open for tourists, with the added benefit that
in ’22 there will be loads of cheap deals because those countries really need their tourism revenue.
It’s going to happen, with one travel company called G Adventures saying it has seen a rise of
35 percent in people booking foreign holidays. Apparently, very popular choices so far have
been Peru, Costa Rica, and Morocco, but if you look at flight bookings, the number of
people buying flights from New York to Paris or LA to London has gone through the roof.
This is why travel experts are now saying 2022 will be the year many people tick off a couple
of travel items they have on their bucket lists. Ok, so in 2021 people could travel,
but my God were there a lot of hoops to jump through, not to mention the fact that
travelers sometimes risked having to pay for a hotel quarantine. We expect by the summer of
2022 traveling will be without such risks. One travel expert summed it up like this,
“I’ve been in tourism research for almost two decades, and the desire
to travel seems incredibly strong right now — the strongest I feel like I’ve ever seen.”
You know that already ‘cos you are watching this and thinking how much you’d love to escape for
a while. It can happen, and there are now more affordable possibilities than ever before. Both
Expedia and the Airlines Reporting Corporation reported that right now roundtrip flights are
35 percent cheaper than they were in 2019. So viewers, don’t feel too down about mutations.
We know you are already embracing a healthier lifestyle and we suspect your work life is
about to get easier. Things are looking up. They certainly will be in the summer
when you’re laid on the beach in Thailand watching the sun sink beneath the horizon
and the word pandemic is far from your mind. Things are on the up. Go forth and prosper,
dear viewers. It is time to shine. Now you need to watch “Embarrassing
Tourist Mistakes You Make In Different Countries.” Or, have a look at...