"After all this is over you're going to come out stronger than ever before"

I’ve been trying to make the most of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown by using my time productively in order that I can emerge from this better than when lockdown started.

You cannot just wait. Like those below you have things to do. Eventually, Earth will need people to return to spin back up the wheels of the human world. Your mission: return better than you left

That’s a quote from a truly excellent mid-lockdown YouTube video from CGP Grey titled Lockdown Productivity: Spaceship You. I highly recommend watching this.

This hasn’t necessarily been easy because I’m balancing full-time work with childcare, homeschooling and supporting my wife in her role as a key worker. But I am trying. This post describes some of my efforts

Investing in my family

One thing I’m grateful for is how much time I’ve been able to spend with my wife and children. As I write this we’ve been together 24/7 (a family of four in a small flat) for 75 days - and it’s been a priceless opportunity to have this time together.

This time together has been harmonious and calm. It has been a bit tough on the children, but they’ve been very resilient - and strange as it may sound - I feel they have benefited in some ways from the time together.

Regular goal-oriented exercise

I’ve been keeping up my exercise. I initially signed up for a challenge to do 300-minutes exercise each week in April.

The medal from my 300-minute challenge

Once that was finished I started a new half-marathon training plan to coincide with the new date for my postponed race. It wasn’t easy finding a 26 week half-marathon plan!

Improving my professional skills and sharing what I learn

I’ve been spending some of my free time learning some technologies we’ve not had an opportunity to get ‘hands on’ with at work. I then produce training materials and run sessions to take developers through them.

Links to all this material is being uploaded to this site.

Improving my guitar

I’ve been playing flatpick acoustic guitar for some time now and one of my new years resolutions was to exceed the 115 hours of practice I did in 2019. This is going well, and I’ve done over 21 hours so far in May (I did 26 hours in April). Definitely on track.

Guitar practice so far in May

Preparing measures for when things return to normal

At some point lockdown will come to an end. There are a few changes I plan to make. For example, I don’t plan to use mass transportation for the forseeable future (but I’ll review this in 2022).

Because I use public transport for my commute this presents a bit of a problem. I considered walking (would take too much time at 2.5 hours a day); running (not practical because of what I’d need to carry); getting a push scooter (too uncomfortable for long journeys - I bought one to try and ended up returning it). A normal bike isn’t an option either because our home is too small to store one. That left one option: a folding bike.

Having done a lot of research the choice was clear and I invested in a Brompton folding bike. And I love it! I’m used to cycle commuting having done so from Twickenham to Westminster for years.

This will be fine for my daily commute to Kew, and longer if necessary.

My new Brompton bike - model M3L

There are, of course, things that haven’t been so great - and I’m not trying to suggest anything is perfect - but I do think that this focus on intentionally trying to behave in ways that prevent the ‘darkness and disorder and a slow drift into abyss’ are making such a difference. I don’t know where we’d be without them.