Coping methods for uncertain times.

Noor Ali-Hasan
7 min readJan 21, 2024
Feather-like plant at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo, December 2023. Photo by author.
Feather-like plant at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo, December 2023. Photo by author.

The past 18 months working in tech have been sad and unsettling. My LinkedIn feed has been a steady stream of green Open for Work banners and posts by connections and connections of connections sharing that they’d been unceremoniously let go due to yet another round of layoffs at yet another tech company. A lot of industries go through ups and downs (I suppose this is the nature of business) but I don’t think the human toll gets any easier.

And so far these first few weeks of 2024 are proving that this year will be more of the same. You could spend this time operating from a place of fear, anxiety, and/or anger. Or you could use the uncertainty to do some reflecting and planning.

I’ve been cycling through moments of anxiety, acceptance, optimism, and productivity. So in the spirit of needing an outlet for my productivity, creativity, and processing my feelings + reflections, here’s a collection of coping methods I’ve been leaning on, along with my thoughts for people managers right now.

Coping methods for you.

It’s OK to not be OK. For a lot of us, our jobs aren’t just jobs. They might be part of our identities. They might be a path to financial security. They might be a source of validation. They might be a way to funnel our ambitions and energies. For me, my work is all of those things and…

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Noor Ali-Hasan
Noor Ali-Hasan

Written by Noor Ali-Hasan

I’m a UX research lead at Google, where I help teams design and build desirable and easy to use products. Outside of work, I love art, Peloton, and Lego.

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