What I want to take out of the COVID lockdown with me
Hey guys. In Victoria we are starting to get restrictions eased off as we start to return to a “new normal”. Because of that I was thinking a little bit about what I want to take away from isolation and this extra time that I have had. I’m glad to say for me at least while I have had decent periods where I’ve been lacking motivation, I think I have still done well to take advantage of the time I have had in lockdown. This post is going to touch on what I have learnt in lockdown that I want to take away from it
First off I’m going to touch on the goals which I set for myself at the start of quarantine.
My first one was to read more. With this one, I am definitely reading more but it has still not been cemented as part of my daily night routine.
Then I had that I wanted to SMASH online study. For me, I think that it has been a success in certain aspects. By this I mean that I have finally realised what it actually means to be a “full-time” student. Last year I felt that I never really applied myself properly to my university studies. I always ended up working more or finding other things to do which ended up justifying my fairly average marks. Now I know more about what time I actually need to be able to do well and actually learn what we are being taught.
As an extension to this, I have really focussed in on trying to learn as much as I can throughout this time. This includes both my work at my current placement, attending various online seminars and also the coach development program that I started with Melbourne Strength Culture a few weeks into quarantine. That program has helped me learn a lot of what you need to know to be a quality coach, processes and the business aspects of this. I have also gained some really good insight into how to improve myself as a coach and a person. If you want to know more about this program feel free to contact me to talk about it and I would be happy to refer you over. Otherwise you can go straight to Melbourne Strength Cultures website and apply from there, make sure to let them know that I’m the one that sent you there though!
Another goal was to post to my socials every day. I definitely have not done that however I had to adjust from doing this over the first few weeks into quarantine because when I was posting every day, I had very little time to do anything else other than make content for socials. On top of that I just didn’t feel that what I was posting was quite as valuable. At this point in my career I think that it is more important that I am taking more time to learn and gain experience as I have been, and then I can create content that is a bit more in depth which I believe is more valuable to share and create. Because of this pivot, I would say that it has been a success simply due to how I feel better now that I am posting slightly less but what I do share I am more proud of and gain more value from it.
The last main goal that I had was to make more time for myself to just decompress. I tend to just work myself into a rut and then do not much of anything for a week once I get burnt out. I think that I have well in this regard in terms of learning the value of rest and finding what is relaxing to me as well as when I need to do this. I have been taking more walks listening to podcasts and have spent some time playing video games without the purpose of trying to get as good at them as I can, just to relax. I feel like this has helped me keep on working more consistently and with greater intention which has improved my effectiveness. While I still have a way to go here, I think I am getting better at it and I can already start to see the benefits of this.
Now with that summary over it’s time to move onto the next part of this post, what I want to take away from isolation.
TO. DO. LISTS. These things have made me so much more productive, organised and reflective over this time. Every night I have written a to-do list in my notebook for the next day. This includes the major tasks I want to complete in that day to make it a successful day. I have cycled through a few styles in this period but I have fallen onto these just being lists with a box which I can just cross out once I’ve completed a task. If a “task” has 2 parts, I will have these separate parts indented. I also make these lists in an order which roughly reflects the order in which I would like my day to go.
While I have always used a calendar, sometimes I just felt that I was constantly moving tasks back because I wasn’t getting around to it. Now with these lists, I feel that the more tasks I get done, the better I am going, and so I do them. Also, and this might sound silly, I feel that these make it so that each task is something I can complete, compared to a calendar blocking which just shows the time I should complete something. I don’t know exactly why it works better for me, but it just does.
I think it’s also worth noting that this, just like anything else, is a skill, and takes time to get better at. At the beginning of quarantine I was making these unruly lists that I could never complete and just constantly felt discouraged. Now I have gotten it down to where I make mostly realistic lists which while I don’t always complete, most days I can say that I was productive and successful.
My three keys that I would suggest to someone for note taking are:
Have enough tasks there to cover your day, plus one (this will take time to learn)
Always have 1-2 “lay-up” easy tasks on your list which you can complete to get the ball rolling or to fill gaps in time
Always write it before your day gets started (night before or morning of)
Those are three things I always try to do and I believe have helped me.I’ll also list a couple of videos which may help you with setting up your own to-do list system below.If there’s one productivity “hack” I want to bring out of quarantine, its this.
Another thing I want to carry through with me is just how I interpret making money at this point in my life. I’ve always been a saver and don’t really enjoy spending money without good purpose. So not making any of it since lockdown begun has been pretty difficult for me. However, at this stage in my life, I am very lucky that my expenses are low and I don’t need to be looking for every dollar. Now this doesn’t mean in any way that coming out of quarantine that I’m either going to be spending any more than I did before without a real purpose, or that I’m going to get lazy and stop working. All I mean by this is that for as long that I am in this position of having lower expenses, I am going to be spending more time on my studies, with friends or gaining experience that before I may have traded for an extra shift at work. The reason this is something I have thought about is that previously it was common for me to pick up extra shifts at work and neglecting these other activities for a bit of extra money. I was always able to justify because I do enjoy reffing as my work, however I realise now that I could be spending time on other things which are likely to bring me more value in the long term. I will still have saving goals however they just won’t be as lofty as they were before and I will place a focus more on going valuable things that I previously neglected to make only a bit of extra cash.
Something else that I have learnt is the importance of making new connections and putting what you are learning and making out into the world. I have learnt how easy it can be to meet and learn from new people just by reaching out. Just by interacting more online through social media, I have met new people who I both aspire to be like and learn from every day. The second part to this is just sharing what you learn. I have been making content both for my blog and some social platforms, mainly Instagram, with now also having an intention to make more videos such as the one I made for this topic. While I don’t get any crazy amount of traction or viewership from this content, I believe that I has still has helped me and those who are viewing it. This comes in two ways. Firstly, just the act of me writing a blog post or producing content for any social platform, requires me to think about what I am talking about and how to package it in a way that I can convey to other people. I believe that this is a good skill to develop for the future as well as also making me have to ensure that my understanding of the topic I am speaking about is comprehensive. Because of this I believe that there are various concepts or topics which I now have a more solid understanding of simply due to producing content about it. The second benefit of me producing content is that I am building a backlog of information which I can access in the future. Not only will this mean that I can look back at how I thought about something, but also I can have answers for questions which I may get just by linking someone to a post or video I have made in the past. This to me seems to be invaluable and I am sure that I will continue to build content even after this quarantine period has passed.
In an effort to make this post not go forever, I am going to make this my last point. I have learnt to only focus on what I can control. There is the stoic concept that if you only focus on what you can control, you are going to be more able to succeed in life. This makes sense because any energy which you spend on things that you can’t control of affect is essentially wasted energy. To pair with this idea, we need to understand that the only thing that we can control is our own actions and thoughts. While there are different theories around what we can control, that is what I believe at this point in time.
This lockdown has forced us to think about this in that none of us on an individual level can control the fact that there were government shutdowns, and that businesses closed and a thousand other events which occurred, however we can control how we react to these events.
As an example, if the lockdowns happened, and you spent a majority of your time being upset and angry about it, there is not much that can happen. Whereas if the lockdowns happened and you then looked at what you can do to spend the time positively and effect change in your own life and others, then you are much more likely to be successful.
I think that this mindset is worth bringing with us out of lockdown and applying to other areas of our lives. Focus on what we can control and try to use less of your energy on the rest.
And with that, I think I have covered a majority of what I have learnt from this COVID lockdown and what I want to take out of it. I think it as always is important to mention the gratitude we have towards those frontline supporters through this pandemic as well as respecting those who did suffer medically from this disease. I hope that this post brought you some sort of value. Thanks for reading and I will be back with another post next week.
TO-DO list help:
