New Month, New Lockdown, New Goals

Hello lockdown my old friend. I’ve come to socially-distance-talk with you again.

Eight months later and here we are. Another lockdown, another set of rules and another month of not seeing friends and family or going about our normal lives.

Part of me is hoping January 1st 2021 will be a clean slate and everything from 2020 will have been a bad dream. Another part of me thinks that this could be our future for a long time; curfews, closures and covid-19.

I hope it isn’t, but it may be a case of finding a way to live with this virus while letting shops and businesses stay open and let people feel a bit of normalcy.

But once again we find ourselves facing four weeks of being housebound. I could wallow in self pity and get down about it (it’s perfectly ok if that’s what you want to do) but that’s just not me.

I’m adapting to this four-week prison sentence and will hopefully have something to show for it at the end.

SMALL GOALS

I’m not going to write the world’s best new novel in 30 days, no siree. I’m talking about small goals and small gains.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and if you’ve read Atomic Habits by James Clear (I would strongly recommend) then you’ll know that small habits repeated over a long period of time lead to a successful larger goal.

Lots of people may look like an ‘overnight success’ but you’ll usually find that there’s been years of hard work and graft put in that has led them to that momentous occasion.

GOALS FOR THE MONTH

Every month I make lists. I make a list of goals that I want to achieve in those 30/31 days.

From that list for the month, I then make a smaller list for week 1 of that month.

I then make a list for each day of that week that will help me tick off my goals for week 1 and hopefully closer to the goals for the overall month.

We’ve all heard the quote, ‘A dream written down is a goal’. I can guarantee that never has a more true statement been spoken. Once you write down what you want to achieve, you can start to think of ways that will help you in achieving this goal.

For example, I might want to write 8 blog posts for the month of November. So in week 1, I’ll write down that I plan to write two blog posts. I’ll then make sure I schedule in time on specific days of that week to write them.

I’ll then do the same for week 2, scheduling in the same amount of time as the previous week. By the end of week 4, I should have 8 blog posts written for the month of November.

NEW GOALS

We love consistency, but we love progress even more. All of my goals usually look the same every month, only with a slight increase.

If I read five books in October, I’ll aim for six in November. If I write six blog posts in November, I’ll try to write seven in December. If I walk 10,000 steps every day in December, I’ll aim for 11,000 every day in January.

Slight increases will make huge improvements month to month.

Don’t get me wrong, there are numbers that I keep to consistently on my lists, like how many posts I put out on Instagram, or weight I like to lose every two weeks. But where you can, make those increases and reap the rewards.

WHAT’S ON MY LIST FOR LOCKDOWN

My lockdown list doesn’t look that different from previous months really as for me, not much is changing other than not being able to go shopping and eating out at a restaurant (which I do a lot of the time).

I’m still working from home so my 9-5 day won’t change, it will just be spending more time at home and trying to fit in some exercise between the rain and tornado-like winds we have here at The Docks.

Since gyms will be closing and I spend a lot of my day sat at my desk, I’ve decided to do a 10,000 steps challenge, aiming for 10,000 steps every day. My Fitbit has come out of hiding and so far, we’ve hit 11,000 steps for the first two days. Let’s see how long it lasts.

I’m hoping this month I’ll have more time to blog, read and work on my own projects that I don’t make time for normally. I’m hoping for a good month for me and for you, and if you aren’t feeling any way motivated, that’s perfectly ok too.

YOU GOT THIS

I just posted a carousel on Instagram with some unasked-for advice on ways to get through this next lockdown.

View this post on Instagram

We’re behind closed doors for another four weeks and it’s going to look very different for all of us. Some will be going to work as normal, some still working from home (a new normal) and others wishing they could go back to work. Some of us will feel more motivated than others and all of us will get through it in our own ways. Whatever your lockdown looks like, do it on your own terms. Whether that’s spending most of it on your sofa or in bed or jumping out of bed with your best lunging foot forward. You do you for these next four weeks and unfollow anyone that tells you or guilts you into thinking otherwise. Just making it through these next four weeks is enough ?

A post shared by Orlagh Claire (@orlaghclaire) on Nov 2, 2020 at 1:58pm PST

I’m hoping that the weeks will go by quickly, the next few days won’t give an unwanted result in a certain US Election (otherwise what’s the point in saying Happy New Year at midnight on the 31st December) and that we’ll see numbers of cases and hospital admittances go down as a result of our efforts.

We may have a shit-show of a government who have no clue how to control this virus (hello month 8 of this hell) but let’s hope that we’re getting ever closer to the end of this thing.

Time to get the Christmas tree up, I think!