My Lockdown Goals | Being Productive During Isolation.

I'm sure we can all agree that right now the world is a very scary, uncertain place right now. With many countries on lockdown to stop the spread of Covid 19, our usual routines have been broken and were learning what a luxury coffee with friends really is. So many things which once felt mundane, we're now longing to do, and in the UK we're only a few days into it. It's going to be a challenge, for many of us because of the impact it could have on our mental health, relationships, finances, and career.

Recently I've been spending a lot of my time at home job searching, but the current situation has pressed the pause button the job search. I have also found myself stopping a lot of the things I could keep up, seeing lockdown as an excuse to stay in my PJs all day and play sims - now as fun as that is, I'm writing this two days into lockdown because I'm feeling a lack of achievement and very unfulfilled. So I've decided to change my perspective. To see this time at home as a gift. To challenge myself to see what I can do with this time, so naturally, I've set myself some goals.

Finish writing my book: 

A few years ago, I began writing a book - it sat at just the first chapter for about a year, finally, I got around to finishing the first rough draft, and then the fear crept in. Once again it went untouched for months. During this time I'm going to edit those chapters, finish a draft which I'm happy to send to publishers. My book won't finish writing itself, and I can achieve my dream of being a published author without that part.

Exercise every day:

I go through phases with exercise. I either pretend it's not a thing or become obsessed with it. I did yoga every day in January (blog post on that here). Since I've done the odd bit of yoga and running but it's not been such a priority. In this time I want to improve my fitness, I want to take advantage of the option to exercise outside and run in the fresh air (which I've done most days so far), on the days I'm not running, I'll be doing yoga because I find the meditativeness of yoga is good for my mind,  and I could do with improving my flexibility and balance. Alongside this I'm completing weekly online sessions with my old personal trainer, @laurenalicefitness on Instagram who is being kind enough to do free sessions on Instagram live during this time - I would recommend following if you want some more challenging strength workouts.

Actually, try to grow my Instagram and Youtube platforms: 

I'm bad at Youtube and Instagram. Maybe bad is the wrong word - I'm not very good at trying to grow them. If I tried a little harder, I could have a larger following, instead I just kind of let them exist as they are, with a very slow organic growth. Sometimes I forget to posts on Instagram, and I'm rubbish at engaging with others. However when I'm putting my time and effort into creating the content, I should want it to be seen, and it should be seen - so I'm going to spend more time engaging online, posting more regularly to Instagram and being consistent with Youtube. To encourage me to actually put the effort in, I've set specific goals which I can track, so by the end of this lockdown, I'd like 200 subscribers on Youtube and 1000 followers on Instagram (if you can help a gal out, that would be fab).

Find new ways to connect with friends:

We are so used to be able to meet up with friends, putting effort keeping friendships alive in this time is more important than ever. I want to check in with friends more often. I've been rediscovering my love for a phone call, I'm trying to take advantage of facetime and at some point, I plan on giving a Netflix party a go.

Get ahead with my blog posts:

Most of the time, despite having blogged weekly for years and despite usually priding myself for my organisation skill, I still find myself writing my blog posts a few days before they go live. I'm bad at remembering to proofread them because I'm so relieved to finish them in time to fit my schedule, typos and all. But with all this extra time at home, I'm going to try to spend some time each day working on blog posts in an attempt to organise myself to get a month or two ahead. I'm going to have to get pretty good at shooting photos around my house, but I'm excited to see all of my posts scheduled and ready to go ahead of time for once.

Improve my blog DA:

If you're a blogger, you'll know that when it comes to working with brands, your domain authority can either be a help or a hindrance. Sadly, mine is the latter. My blog DA is much lower than I believe it should be because I spent years blogging with little to no understanding of SEO. As I'd like to work with more brands and for more people to see my blog, I'm going to spend this time editing old posts trying to get that DA number up. Fixing broken links is my first step.

Read more:

Reading is something I always want to do more of, now I actually have the time. I will also be recording what I'm reading more, writing book reviews on here and Instagram. If you want to read along with me, you can join #chloeharrietsbookclub, head over to this blog post to find out what my book picks for the next few months are. Next week I have a book review blog post catching you up with my thoughts on all of my book club books from the year so far. I'm trying to get as much reading done as possible so between the book club books I'll picking overs from my shelf to make my way through, I'm currently reading (and loving) My Life in 37 Therapies by Kay Hutchison which was kindly gifted to me (and I will also be reviewing it soon)


Have you set any goals for this time?

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