I suspect that the coronation of a king is one of those events where we refer to the steps of the ceremony we performed last time, to "do it again". If we know what we did last time, and it seems in retrospect to have gone well, we can play the same music, invite the same sorts of guests, say the same words and perform the same acts. That way, it may go well again. This performing according to the same pattern used before offers comfort and a feeling of security but it clashes with the drive to innovate, to improve, to bring in something novel and exciting.
We may also have some basic fear of losing our self-control and our discipline. The installation of a new queen or pope will probably be designed to be complex, tiring, trying and extended. That way, when it is over, we will be likely to feel that the new person is really and properly "in", as desired. So, any young whippersnappers with crazy "modern" ideas can just wait 60 years and see how they feel about modifying a wonderful old ceremony.
Now that we are in the Zoom era, we realize that our impulse to cram even more into our lives can be accommodated by adjusting the computer cam so that others cannot see that we are wearing our pajama bottoms to the "meeting." But, horrors! The very thought stirs primitive fears of "letting ourselves go". Not just our dress for meetings but our way of life. What if we go to the dogs, become animals, lose our manners, our civility? What then?
Maybe we had better adhere to the old ways, the performances and procedures that let us know we are "carrying on", continuing on the tried and true. We may uncover a better way, a clear path toward improvement that is worthwhile. But there is always the need to actually re-train ourselves in something new if we are convinced we should. Lynn looked up "time to form a new habit" and found a suspiciously clear-cut answer: 66 days. I looked up "how many repetitions to form a habit" and found 50 repetitions.
So, if you want to sit in the Zoom meetings without your pants, go ahead. But don't be surprised if you feel more comfortable most days if you follow your usual procedure. When you work in testing or questionnaire construction, the first basic property that gets studied is "reliability". It is a bit of a fiction of course that anything anywhere stands still, for us or for anyone anywhere. However, it is nice when we learn that 6 x 7 = 42 and it continues to do so.
