Or: Setting goals in the lockdown
As of 2 April, our lockdown rules changed. This was also the day our lockdown officially extended from 14 days to 26 days (it now ends on 15 April).
The only thing we are allowed to leave our houses for is to go shopping. Only one person per household is allowed to leave. The rest of us are at home – no exercise, no work (unless you have a permit and are in an industry deemed critical).
Shopping is a well organised outing as it allows for social distancing and keeping the store workers safe too.
We shop according the first letter of our last names. Each letter is designated two days per week where they can go to the store.
At our particular shopping venue, we could place our order via Whatsapp so they would prepare it all in advance, notify us when it was ready and we then go to pay (from a cashier in protective gear who was outside the store so the inside wouldn’t be contaminated).
All very efficient and low risk.
It’s now been over two weeks since I’ve left the house.
Aside from feeling a bit bigger than usual, missing diving and being a bit concerned about finances, I’m enjoying this period.
It’s not often where I have unlimited time and almost no constraint on what I’m able to do with it. Apart from the obvious…
I figure this means I have no excuse to not do all those things I typically put off based on being time poor.
It also means the things I’m still putting off, I clearly never really wanted to do in the first place and either had some sense of obligation for it or had forgotten why I was initially interested in it.
With all this in mind, I decided to set some lockdown goals so I can feel like I’ve achieved something over this time:
- complete the Green Fins course – this is an online course to help me be a more environmentally-aware dive leader and I’m hoping to take what I learn back to the dive centre to help it operate in a more environmentally-friendly way too
- write some blogs in advance for the dive centre so there are always a few ready
- set up a social media calendar for the dive centre accounts so I never have a content shortage and we can make it more cohesive too eg perhaps having themes for a day or a week and also factoring in various public holidays, PADI initiatives etc
- set up the dive centre social media accounts properly and post more regularly for those that are not currently used much
- update the dive centre website so it is more SEO friendly and work toward getting it on page 1 of Google – there will be champagne the day that this happens!
- have a long list of diving related possible blog topics so I don’t have to keep thinking about them each time
- rest
- contact people and arrange virtual catchups so I can maintain face-to-face contact as well as general online chats
- organise my online To Be Read list so it’s easier to shop from my own bookshelves – Goodreads is a great app for this
- plenty of reading and writing!
This list is in no particular order, just like how I’ll get through it.
While it seems like this is a work heavy list, it’s all things I enjoy though I’ve only been able to allocate time to these tasks in a piecemeal way. While it still gets done, it’s not quite so satisfying.
I’d prefer to batch tasks where I can as it is a lot more efficient and then the whole task is complete too.
Our lockdown is now extended until 15 April.
Let’s see how I go!
* Thanks to The Killers for the title to this post.