1. Leaving on a Jet Plane by Esteban Chinetti

Bumpy Landing

We moved to the UK three months ago. There were three of us – my wife, my baby and myself, and we arrived with maybe a half dozen pieces of luggage to our name. We arrived bright-eyed, bushy tailed and hopelessly optimistic that everything would quickly and easily fall into place.

We quickly got a reality check. Concepts such as NINo, Council tax or having to pick electricity suppliers were completely alien to us. ‘Proof of address’ or not carrying cash around were also strange concepts. (Spoiler alert: everything has indeed fallen into place, as we found a nice garden flat and I’ve been working at 4OC for over two months now.)

Moving countries is not unlike switching jobs, or lifestyles or even between different ways of working. One day you just start sleeping somewhere else, or have a different commute or just eat from a different menu. While thinking about writing this piece, I realised some of these thoughts about change could be translated to our current, global situation, where a massive transformation was imposed on us all.

Sensible Steps for Change

So, applying my zero experience of moving continents, I thought I’d share some of the lessons we picked up along the way that could easily be applied to any change:

• Organisation – In our case, that was making lists. We made lists of everything we thought was needed, of what was not needed and what was desirable or uncertain. Some lists we never used again while others saw heavy editing, rectifying or regular scrapping. Arguably, whatever tool that works best to keep one organised (and sane) is the right tool.

• Priorities, Complexities, Tasks – Once we had our lists, we broke everything down into tasks, taking into consideration how hard these things were, how urgent they seemed to be and who would be better off taking care of it. I learnt that I was a lot worse than I thought with communicating, but much better at delegating to others what to communicate. Which takes us to…

• Responsibilities – We came up with various, smaller ‘projects’ that would be easier to tackle (selling our house, selling the stuff inside our house, finding what documentation was needed to enter the UK, all while allocating time for family and friends).

• Managing Expectations – Not only ours; we had a list of “stakeholders” who all wanted to be involved in different ways (yes, I’m talking about you, mom). We did our best to put each where they would feel best and, at the same time where they would be able to help us out the most

Manage the things you can

Throughout all of this process, we knew where we stood at the start, but we had no clear idea where we would end or indeed, when it would all end. And this was a key source of stress, however intangible, indirect or unmeasurable. We were focused on our goal and happy to embark on this adventure. This is where it differs from the current global crisis, which is why dealing with it might be harder for many.

In our case, what worked best for us was to set smaller goals and achievements, to be able to effectively measure our success in all of our planning. Some days we would be frustrated by the speed (or lack thereof) in which selling our house would go, but we would celebrate having sorted out our flights or our work-related obligations. Other days, we would discover that selling the house was not a feasible goal, and we needed to aim at renting it.

What helped us most was the closeness with which we related to all of our stakeholders. That is, how much we were able to connect with our family and friends: to help us, to hear us out and to make the transition as smooth as possible. Accepting help, trusting in ourselves and in those we care about was as important as keeping our eyes on the goal.