What Should You Be Doing During Lockdown?
Are you tired of lockdown yet? If Netflix were a food, I’d have gained 100 pounds in the last two weeks. What felt like a snow day now feels like Ground Hogs Day.
For some, COVID-19 has turned their world upside down. For those of us lucky enough to not have faced it yet, quarantine has hit the pause button on our lives. If you go to bed every night feeling like you’ve wasted another day, you aren’t alone. We’re all waiting for this shit to end and experts continue to predict longer timeframes.
Rather than waiting for things to change, it’s time to hit the unpause button on life. So, what should you be doing while stuck at home?
VALUE SORT
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
Although Netflix is restful, it hasn’t been fulfilling. Why is that? Because it doesn’t fit your values. Values are defined as “One’s judgment of what is important in life.”
What’s most important in your life?
It’s easy to name one thing but can you name your top 5? I couldn’t and it’s no wonder that I’ve been going to bed feeling the emotional equivalent of eating a full carton of ice cream on a nightly basis. Emotionally I’ve been trying to fill my life with empty calories of TV and video games.
Rather than waiting for everything to blow over, it’s time to start living out of your values. Therapists like to recommend an activity called a Value Sort. It’s a way to identify what’s most important to you. It’s amazing how we lose sight of who we want to be through the monotony of our day-to-day lives. We forget who we are and we slip into a state of mindlessness. It’s not until big events, like death and quarantine, shake us from our routines. It’s only then that we realize that we haven’t been living the way we’d hoped we would.
Think2Perform provides a free value sort online. If you’re curious about what you should be doing during this time of isolation, start with this activity. It’s a good way to identify what’s important to you. It forces you to pick from a group of 49 values and whittle the list down to 5. It’ll remind you who you are at your core.
Don’t skip this exercise because it always comes with surprises. For me, I’ve always valued creativity. My bachelor’s degree was in fine arts. I painted for years. Now I enjoy writing. All this involves creativity. Yet, creativity didn’t make my top-5. Instead, my top-5 are competence, integrity, play, service, and spirituality.
COMPARE HOW YOU SPEND YOUR TIME WITH YOUR VALUES
After you evaluate your values, you need to look at how you’re spending your time. You can do this by creating an hour-by-hour calendar and filling it out. Every time you switch activities, jot it down. When you pull out your phone to surf the internet, pay attention to what you’re doing and what you’re looking at.
Understanding where you put your time is as important as understanding your values. Evaluating your time usage will help you to see if you’re living out of your core. Does the way you spend your time match the values that you have?
For me, I notice a discrepancy. Every Sunday my phone reminds me of how much time I spend surfing the internet. Hours each day get wasted on sports, news, and random videos. After work, I see that I spend a significant amount of time playing video games. Although these activities fit my value for play, I don’t do anything to fulfill my other values: competence, service, spirituality, or integrity. It’s no wonder I feel so empty at the end of the day.
How are you living your life right now? How are your values driving your use of time? If you see large discrepancies, like me, then it’s time to move onto the next step. If, however, you aren’t like me and your time is fitting your values perfectly. I hate you — I say that in the most jealous but loving way possible. In fact, maybe you should be writing this article.
Adapt
For the rest of us, we might’ve been living out of our values before the lock-downs started happening. However, now that we are trapped inside, we’ve found ourselves lost. So we binge entertainment.
The lockdown can’t be an excuse for why we aren’t living out of our values. Time is the most valuable thing we have. If the Coronavirus has shown us anything, it’s that this world is unpredictable and we don’t know how much time we have.
I hate that I’m going to type these next words but I am going to do it anyway: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. It’s a trite overused cliché for a reason. If you want to live out of your values, you must be determined. You need to adapt to the world you live in — even if it is virus-infested.
I’m not advocating for you to leave the home, but rather adjust to how you do life. We see others adapt like those who are extroverted. They’re finding ways to connect with others. They have beers via Skype and do Zoom Meetings with family. For those who love serving people, they’re making masks to help medical professionals. Churches have moved to online services. Society is adapting and we need to do the same.
You must believe that there is a way to live out your values in a quarantined world. Once you adopt this mindset, start to imagine what can happen. Possibilities open up. Although not endless, you now can start to live a more satisfying life. Instead of eating gallons of emotional ice cream, you can start to have tasty nutritional meals.
For me: I’m determined to start serving my community from home. To feel more satisfied, I need to serve. That’s my way to act out my other four values. By exploring the needs of those around me and trying to serve those who are struggling, I already feel more satisfied. My life feels more purposeful in a bleak time.
The Coronavirus is putting us all to the test. Do you want to look back at the end of this test and feel like you wasted your time on Netflix? Or do you want to be a better person because of how you responded to adversity? The gift of time is precious. How do you want to spend it?
