How to come out of lockdown better than you entered it.

Monday, 1st February 2021

“This week we have a blog post written by one of our BTEC Sport & Public Services students, Jack. In it he discusses the different tips and tricks necessary for achieving more throughout lockdown. He examines some methods of goal-setting and explains his own reasons for his goals and how he sets about achieving them. I hope you enjoy this input and appreciate how the world in lockdown can appear through the eyes of one of our students.”

– Ben, Sport & Public Services Lecturer

We will start by covering what you could do to come out of lockdown better than you entered. Then how to do this and also why.

So since I think I’ve just roped myself in for more than I can handle, I’m going to start and try to get this done under the word count I’m trying to achieve.

What could we do?
For “what could we do?” there is almost no point in me giving suggestions of what to do because it shouldn’t be about anyone else. You have to figure out what you really want to achieve. Maybe it’s one thing, maybe multiple things. After you’ve figured out what you want to achieve then it’s time to talk about how.

The first part will be, goal setting. I’ve read a lot of different things about goal setting: some people say to set achievable, arguably easy, goals; some say to set unrealistic goals. This might not make much sense at the moment, but let me explain. One way to describe an unrealistic goal is taking a 10-year goal, and trying to get there in 6 months. Now, you might not get there in 6 months – but you would probably be further ahead than if you were only trying to reach your goal in 10 years. What I’m trying to say is, there is no harm in setting big goals, just don’t let it be the be all and end all if you do not do it in the time frame. So decide what you want to do by the end of lockdown and then the next step is to decide the first point to visualise. This doesn’t just mean imagine what it would be like to get to your (goal although you can and should do that!) I’m also talking about visualising the process it will take to get there (the individual steps). What are the micro-goals that you are working toward today to get you closer to the end goal? And what are the micro-goals for this week? This month? Think about every detail that will help you get where you want to be in the long run.

The next part is about structuring your day to achieve your micro-goals. My recommendation is to try and use the mornings. Let’s say you go to bed at 11pm and get up at 9am. What worthwhile things are you doing in the two hours before you go to sleep? If you’re like me, you would have been sitting down watching Netflix and not getting much done. Now, if you had an extra two hours in the morning, what would you be able to do with them? A workout? College work? Learn something new? How much of a book could you read? If you think you could do more, try going to bed two hours earlier and getting up two hours earlier. 

Next, let’s talk about the power of atomic habits. What are atomic habits? Atomic habits are small wins. And there is a lot of science to back up the expression “winning breeds winning”. The first one might be getting up when your alarm goes off and not pressing the snooze button. The next may be making your bed – a slightly bigger win but still tiny. Then, you have a healthy breakfast, and because you’ve had a healthy breakfast you decide, “why let this good go to waste? Might as well do a little workout too!”. By the end of the day, you’ve been far more productive and it could all be accredited to this one habit first thing in the day: not pressing snooze.

Ok, that was the first part – here’s the second…

My personal goals and why I’ve set them
It’s pretty simple. I was quite ill the year 10/11 of school mentally, and I realised I had a choice to dwell on my problems or use them as fuel to prove my old self wrong. I’d like to think I’ve gone with the second one. 

I have 3 main categories of goals, and every day I aim to get closer to at least one of these categories. My three categories are:

• Educational – to finish college and have the choice to do what I want with my future. I don’t want any doors shut. So if I want to go to a uni, I can go – or I can do whatever else I decide to do.
• Physical – I want to be a personal trainer, and although I’m not badly built at the moment, it’s not where I want to be. So one of my goals is to improve my physique.
• Financial – since I am not too sure about university, my financial goal is to have a mortgage on a flat of my own by 20 years old. This may change, but for now it’s one of the goals I’m focusing on.

For me, these goals mean I want to get grades good enough throughout this lockdown to keep my options open, I want to be in a slightly better shape when I come out of lockdown, and I want to be a bit better financially. You can be sure I’m working towards them every day of lockdown! I’m currently training 5 days a week and accepting that on this current cycle I might not like as much how I look but being happy that it will get me where I want to be, Hitting my goal of working 25 hours paid work a week while trying to be on top of all my college work and getting acceptable grades.

I hope that with this blog post I might have been able to help one person have a slightly better lockdown, since for me, achievement and productivity is strongly linked to my happiness.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a good day,

– Article by Jack, Sport & Public Services student

sport@brooklands.ac.uk