In his member’s journal post for this week, Ben Brooks talks about some current changes that are going to stick after this pandemic is over. He talks about wearing a face mask when being sick and/or around peak flu season. He talks about emergency bags in case of needing to leave in a hurry for whatever reason.

There were a couple of things he mentioned, though, that made me think. He talked about digital notes versus pen and paper. His exact quote:

“That’s just more things (one of which is hard to clean) that I need to clean and need to worry about keeping safe from germs. It is simply easier to take notes on my iPad and Pencil and wipe those down, than it is to carry anything else unnecessary.”

Something else he talked about (which I never even thought about) is carrying a pen. All the times we grab a pen and use it to write and/or sign something (credit card receipts, documents, etc) and we never think about the germs that are possibly on that pen.

I’ve often wondered what changes will stick after this pandemic is over. Will we see less hand shaking? Will we see more people carrying around hand sanitizer? Will we stay away from crowded areas? I’m not sure anyone knows the answer, but it’s going to be interesting to see what happens.