Lockdown Productivity
In my Year in Review post for 2020, I mentioned how the COVID-19 pandemic reaffirmed my need for strong guidelines with clearly-defined, specific, and actionable targets. I found that I needed a pre-built structure in order to be productive day-to-day. After all, I’m at home. There’s nothing that can physically stop me from staying in bed as late as I want or deciding I’m “done for the day” as early as I feel like it. There’s no supervisor to ensure I work at a certain pace. I’m beholden only to myself, and frankly I’m not the best candidate for holding myself accountable.
When you’re your own boss there’s a conflict of interest. I know that sounds paradoxical. Surely the whole point of being your own boss is to avoid a conflict of interest, right? Well- in my case at least- it’s not that simple. Since March of 2020 I’ve been on furlough, and come September I’ll be starting grad school in London. All the free time in between feels like a gift, an opportunity to write as much as I can, to read as much as I can, and to generally educate or improve myself for the future. I think a lot of folks in this position have felt the same way. There’s a sense that people feel pressured to engage with their creativity, to make use of this sudden dump of free time that we can’t spend with those outside our households. For the boomers that means gardening and DIY with a religious fervor. For millennials and such it means…
