Week 10 of Quarantine- How to Refocus and Reset Goals: 10 Action Items that Work
There’s no doubt about it. Time in quarantine feels so different compared to how it felt before. It passes differently, I can lose track of it more easily, and I find myself having to check the calendar more often to find where we are in it.
Part of why time feels so strange is the uncertainty of it all. And, isn’t that how people have been referring to it? This “time of uncertainty.” Not knowing what will happen next feels ominous and unsettling.
And, yet is it really all that more uncertain than any other time in our lives? I’m still doing the #Next90Challenge (it’s not too late, if these posts have piqued your interest. Sign up here). And, throughout the challenge, Rachel Hollis has made the very valid point that the future has always been uncertain. Being in a world-wide pandemic with so many changes to our routines just makes it feel more uncertain.
Logically, I know that there have never been any guarantees about tomorrow. I could get into a car accident on the way to work or diagnosed with an illness. My daughter’s illness was a good lesson about life’s unpredictability, so I have learned this before.
But, with virus numbers going up and states trying to open, there’s a level of unpredictability to the situation that makes it particularly stressful. And, I think that is what makes this time feel more uncertain than life was before it.
Goals
So, I not only listened to the #Next90Challenge lesson this week, I also tuned in to a number of Rachel Hollis podcasts about this week’s topic: goals. I was pretty excited when I saw the topic for this week because I am a big fan of setting goals. And, my decision to revamp my goals, detailed here, at the beginning of April has helped me feel better about this time in quarantine.
It’s funny, because I wasn’t always a goal setter. Or, I set goals, but I didn’t really plan out how I would reach them. If I’m being honest, I will say that I only became interested in goal planners when good old Pinterest starting showing pictures of PowerSheets on my feed.
At first, it was not the goal-setting that got me interested in PowerSheets, it was the prospect of checking out a new planner. So, there’s my confession for the week- I got into goal planning because I thought the planner was cute.
In my defense, though, I didn’t just buy the planner based on the cover. Once I heard about it, I did what all good planner-loving research attorneys do, and I researched it. I checked out Instagram photos, watched videos, and read reviews.
What I found was that the women who were buying this planner claimed that they were living much more intentional lives. They gave PowerSheets a lot of credit for things they had been able to achieve in their lives, so based on that I decided to give them a try. And, I’m glad I did.
Every January for the past 3 years, I have started working a new PowerSheets Planner. (If you’re interested in how the planner works, check out my posts here and here). And, I give PowerSheets credit for all manner of things– from developing a presentation for work to learning to manage and overcome my plantar fasciitis. Setting these goals and being intentional about how to achieve them helped me stay on track.
I took my goal-setting to the next level after reading (yes, I know, I’m talking about her again) Rachel Hollis’s book about setting and achieving goals: “Girl Stop Apologizing.” In the book, Ms. Hollis talks about how she managed to build a multi-million dollar business, publish best-selling books, and have meaningful relationships in her family by checking in with her goals on a daily basis.
If you have not yet read this book, it is a great introduction to long-term and short-term goal planning. It’s also a fairly quick and fun read.
Thanks to “Girl Stop Apologizing” and the Rachel Hollis videos and podcasts I’ve heard, I have been journaling about my goals each morning for several months. Each day I write down my “10 Dreams” – things that I believe would lead to me becoming my best self if I achieve them in the next decade of my life.
I also write down the goal I’m currently working on. And, folks, it’s sometimes a really simple one. For example, for the longest time I wanted to have section of my office devoted to my artwork. So, for months I thought about it, researched it, looked at a lot of Pinterest pages, and ultimately found a way to convert part of our home office into an art station.
My daily goal journaling has become an important part of how I look at my day and approach my goals. I’m grateful that I found the written materials and videos that have guided me in this practice.
So, as someone who has followed Rachel Hollis’s advice on goal setting, you can imagine my surprise when the lesson this week was taught by her husband, Dave Hollis. I know the two are “tag-teaching” (my term- you like it?) the #Next90Challenge, but I was honestly taken aback when Dave appeared on the screen instead of the goal-setting queen herself. That said, I decided to keep an open mind, and I’m glad I did.
Rachel Hollis’s main focus when it comes to goal setting is to dream big, list those dreams, and then distill them down into goals that can be reached by taking certain steps. Dave Hollis took a different approach that brought me back to the basics of goal-setting.
I found it helpful to have Dave outline, not only the benefits of goal-setting, but he explained an acronym for it that he claimed his 5th grade son had learned: S.M.A.R.T. And, when I Googled it, I found that the term was pretty popular. In fact, I learned that each of the letters had several words attributed to it, depending on the website.
Here’s what S.M.A.R.T. stands for:
- S– Specific. Goals should not be some generalized notion of something you want, but they should be a specific thing you wish to acquire (buying a house) or outcome you want to attain (getting into a particular college).
- M– Measurable. You should be able to measure your progress as you go about reaching for this goal. (The goal of buying a house allows you to track how much money you are saving and how far off you are from meeting your goal).
- A– Achievable. You should be able to figure out a roadmap for reaching this goal and break it down into the steps it will take to get there. Also, it should be a realistic goal. So, winning the lottery, which would be great but is something left entirely up to chance, is not something you can realistically work toward as a goal.
- R– Relevant. There is no goal worth pursuing if it doesn’t mean something to you. Having a relevant goal means that this goal inspires and motivates you personally, not that it is something you are just doing because it seems like a good thing to do or because others expect you to do it.
- T– Timely. This is where Dave and Rachel Hollis differ, but this last aspect of a successful goal requires you to be able to set a time limit for reaching your goal. It could be a deadline that you set for yourself, or one that is set for you (such as when we had to move to our second house because the loan on our first loan had an interest rate that would go up on the fifth year of our mortgage).
Once you have set a goal, I do recommend having a way to check in on yourself and track your progress. This is why I use the PowerSheets Goal Planner. The prep work at the beginning of the book, as well as the monthly and seasonal checkups help me to hone in on what I want to be working toward.
It’s also important to be able to measure your progress. So, having an entire page of a planner devoted to tracking monthly, weekly, and daily strides is helpful as it provides a visual way to see where you are, as well as what is and what is not working.
Lots of people think that setting goals has to be about either money or health. The Hollis’s stress that you can set a goal for anything that is meaningful to you, which is really exciting as I like setting and reaching goals, and I don’t want to give up setting new goals when I hit that stage in my life where money or fitness are my main concerns.
But, why set goals now?
This is a good question. I know it’s the middle of the year (not even the true halfway-point yet). And, it feels like everything is up in the air— as I mentioned above, this is a time of “uncertainty.”
But, the reason the Hollis Challenge includes a week on goals is one that I’ve written about previously. As I noted here, setting goals is a way to feel in control of something when life feels out of control (as it does now for many of us). And, more importantly, it’s a sign of hope.
During the times that my daughter’s illness has been most out of control, I have found comfort in being able to set goals about other aspects of my life that brought me happiness or at least a sense of accomplishment.
When we set goals, it means that we have faith that there will be a tomorrow, and that we want a say in how that tomorrow may look for us. It also gives some purpose to how we spend our days, because we are hopefully doing a little something each day, week, or month to move us closer to where we want to be.
And, while this isn’t the traditional time of the year people usually do their goal-setting (like New Year’s or a birthday), I have talked about this being a good time to hit the reset button (see post here) and reevaluate our goals.
Things have changed, and that means some goals you previously set may no longer be realistic. But, the exciting thing is that we now have an opportunity to see if there are some new values and desires emerging in us that might lead us to set goals we haven’t previously considered.
That said, reevaluating your goals during a quarantine can be challenging, especially if we are feeling scattered or our lives seem chaotic. I mean, in many ways, this doesn’t feel like a new start- it feels like we’re in limbo.
So, how do we even start to think about resetting our goals during a time like this? We need to refocus first.
Time to Focus
In addition to doing the #Next90Challenge, I found another free seminar that I decided to try during my time in quarantine. This is one I knew I couldn’t pass up when I heard about it.
Oprah was in the middle of her “2020 Vision: Year in Focus” tour when she too was derailed by the pandemic. (See? We do have things in common with Oprah!). Before that, I had been keeping up with some of her interviews from that tour that she replayed on her podcast, but there was no way I was going to be able to attend one of those events.
A few weeks ago, I learned that she shifted her tour from a traveling show to a free four-session webinar. And, that was all it took. I signed up and attended the first one on Saturday 5/16/20. And it was really helpful: challenging, inspiring, and reassuring. It had just what I would have hoped someone like Oprah would provide.
Just like the Hollis Challenge, there is a theme for each week of Oprah’s webinar, and the first week’s was “focus.” Thinking about your focus is such a great and logical way to start any program, since it is hard to make progress unless you are first grounded and able to see things clearly.
And, I found this particularly helpful during a week that I spent so much time learning about goals. Because, let’s face it. Unless we are focused, there is no way that we can shift our mindset to contemplating our future and goals.
But, I’m sure another reason Oprah decided to start with “focus” (aside from the word’s being in the name of her tour) is because, for many of us, living during a pandemic is making it hard to focus on anything except the realities of living during a pandemic.
That made me think about the times that I have lived through adversity or had some ground-shaking (or rather, faith-shaking) experience. Each time, I had to learn to steady myself and refocus so I could move forward with my life. And, with practice, it is getting easier each time.
Below are 10 action items you can use during times of adversity or uncertainty to help you refocus your mindset and structure your time to make room for new goals.
10 Action Items to Help You Refocus and Reset Your Goals
1. Set an Intention. Before you can refocus, or set any goals at any time of year, you have to ask yourself why. What is your purpose in setting any goals? Are you looking to gain some control over something in your life right now? Do you seek a sense of satisfaction by completing something? Or is there something you want to reach toward in your life because it will be positive for your body, your mind, or your finances? Figuring out the why and setting an intention will help you focus on the reason behind your goals and what you plan to get out of them.
2. Review Your Pre-Pandemic Goals List. If you are scattered and confused about your future, think about the goals you had set (if you had them) before the pandemic changed things. While there are definitely some goals that you might have to place on hold for the time being (like planning a big family reunion this summer), are there others that you can still work on despite being in quarantine? Is it possible that you’ve put some off thinking you would pick them up in the two weeks we thought this would all blow over? See if there are things you can be doing now to make these goals a reality. That can provide the focus to get back on track with your goals.
3. Recall Goals You’ve Achieved. Now that you’ve reviewed your recent previous goals, recall goals you set in the past and you achieved. Try to remember how it felt to reach your goals. Were you excited or proud? Did you reward yourself? What did it mean to you to know you had achieved something that you had worked toward? Recalling your past wins is a great way to reclaim the motivation and excitement you need to focus on setting goals for the future.
4. Brainstorm Goals. As I’ve said before, this time in quarantine is a great time to think about a lot of things, goals included. I find it helpful to grab a journal and either write a few paragraphs to explore goals or make some lists about it. Think about all the aspects of your life that could use some new direction- fitness, finances, career, family, relationships, self-care, faith, home. Writing out what comes to your mind when you think of these things may reveal changes you wish to make or things you want to achieve. Let your mind wander and don’t limit yourself. Even outlandish dreams can sometimes lead us to focus on the big picture goals that lie beneath the surface.
5. Drop the Baggage. I mentioned this in last week’s post. If you are holding on to some form of emotional baggage, it can cloud your mindset and shift your attention from the future to holding on to some negative part of the past. Letting go of what is holding you back can help you refocus on the hopeful aspects of your life and ways to move forward in the future.
6. Identify Distractions. On a daily basis, we have to fight all manner of distractions to stay focused on whatever task we are working on. Those same distractions are likely making it even harder to focus during our time in quarantine when we are all naturally feeling unsteady. It’s hard to focus on future goals when we are being bombarded by scary news stories, arguments on social media feeds, and sometimes our own temptation to escape reality by just playing on the internet.
Learning to focus means tuning out distractions, and that means identifying what throws you off course. By identifying your distractions, you can plan to avoid them, whether that means limiting your time on social media or only allowing yourself to check email once or twice a day.
7. Repeat Word and Phrases. One way to focus on a goal or on goal-setting generally is to choose a word, mantra, or phrase that signifies your commitment to being focused. As I’ve written before (such as here) each year, I choose a word of the year to describe a particular value or character trait that I hope will guide my goals during that year. Each month, the PowerSheets Planner has a place to write out an encouraging phrase. I’ve also heard of other folks choosing a word of the day or the week.
Choosing a word or phrase to ponder on a regular basis is a great way to remind yourself of and focus on what you value during that time period. It doesn’t matter what you choose, but be sure to place the word somewhere you will see it and remind you of what your focus is for that day, week, month, or year.
8. Manage Your Time. Managing how we spend our time takes practice. And, depending on how your schedule has been during this pandemic, you may have fallen out of practice entirely. Regaining some focus in our lives may be a matter of structuring our days so that we can turn our attention back to setting and making progress toward our goals. It also has to take into account when we are most likely to be focused and productive.
So, try to arrange your day in ways that work for you . If you are not a morning person, don’t expect yourself to be goal-oriented and working productively first thing in the morning. Instead, arrange your day so that you are doing some work either setting or making progress toward a goal during the time you’re most likely to be productive. The same can be said for getting things done during your most productive times in the week. I know I am more likely to have the energy and motivation to get a lot done at the beginning of the week, and I tend to lose steam toward the end of the week. So, if I have a weekly task to do for my goal, I am better off doing it on a Monday or Tuesday rather than leaving it for a Thursday or Friday.
9. Set reminders. Even when you have turned off all of the unnecessary distractions in your life, you may lose track of time and not dedicate enough to working on your goals. Being focused means making sure that you work on what is important, even if it is just for a few minutes per day or week. After deciding when you will be most productive, schedule when you will work on setting or working on goals and then set some reminders.
Luckily, we live in a digital age where you can program your smart phone to send you a notification or even ask your smart speaker device (like Alexa on an Amazon Echo) to remind you to do something at a particular time. If you have a device like that available, use it. It will not only provide you an opportunity to focus on your goals, you won’t be wasting time checking your watch to see when you should be shifting gears.
10. Discipline Yourself. At the end of the day, discipline is what drives us to do what must get done even when we sometimes lack the internal motivation to do it. In order to determine just how disciplined you must be with yourself, you have to be honest. Does being consistent about your habits come naturally to you? Do you find it easy to be organized with your time and tasks?
If you are like me, you may struggle with these things and that requires being highly disciplined. There are a number of things that will help bring some routine and focus back to your life. Habit tracking is extremely helpful, which is why most goal-focused planners have some form of daily habit tracker. Just as important is having a routine. Try to do your basic routines at the same time and in the same order every day. This is how true habits are formed. You can also leave yourself notes or (as noted above) notifications. Finally, try to find an accountability partner – someone to help you stay on track by having you check in and encouraging you to stay the course. Whatever tools you use to discipline yourself, being consistent about it will help foster an environment where you can focus on what is important.
Focusing on Goals
Whatever stage you are in life, setting goals can provide you with the desire to get up and look forward to the day. Achieving goals builds confidence and self-esteem.
More importantly, focusing on goals during this time, when we are all feeling a bit shaky about our lives is one way to steady ourselves. Try using some of the tools I outlined above to help you refocus- they will work whether you are trying to focus on goals or on some other task on your to do list.
As always, here’s how the week looked:
Saturday. While I’m not a big fan of filling up my weekend with time-consuming tasks, I was really happy that I signed up for “Oprah’s Your Life in Focus: A Vision Forward — Live Virtual Experience.” (Information about the webinar and how to register for free can be found here ). Each webinar is 90 minutes long, but it goes by quickly and has a great message. This week’s session also included celebrity interviews with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kate Hudson.
Sunday. We have fallen into a nice routine on Sundays with 9AM remote Sunday School and 10:30AM virtual church. This weekend, we had a hymn with a Latin rhythm. When our choir director suggested we get maracas of some sort, my daughter paused the video and got a plastic egg filled with beads that she made in church last year. We sang with our own little percussion section keeping the beat. That day I also became obsessed with finding a way to protect bird feeders. First, ants have attacked my hummingbird feeder. They crawl around it and eventually go inside, only to drown in the sugar water. I found and ordered an ant guard for the feeder. But, in my research, I also ran across a bird feeder that keeps squirrels away. We have not put out a bird seed feeder in years because of the squirrels, but I think I will now be placing a Yankee Flipper bird feeder on my Amazon wish list. I spent the afternoon with the kids on YouTube watching birds get spun off of bird feeders. Mean but true. 🤣
Here is the bird feeder that gave us such a laugh. I’m seriously considering getting one for our back yard. It’s a splurge item, though, so it will have to wait.
Monday. After having trained my interns the Friday before, it was time to get these students working on their various projects. I ended up doing an additional Zoom training after providing them assignments, and the summer intern program is officially off and running! Later that evening, I attended our second attempt at a book club meeting over Zoom. The friend who hosted it did an amazing job of coming up with fun questions for us, and we went around the virtual room, chatting about our favorite books. It was such a great way to have a meeting like this and so much fun to see some friends online.
Tuesday. With two deadlines for Friday looming over me, I had to buckle down to work. Talk about focus- I had a client phone meeting and spent the day organizing myself to write some briefs. The week was really rainy, so I had to find a way to exercise indoors. I whipped out my old 7-minute workout app and decided to give it a try. Um, yikes. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that workout, and I could tell I would be sore for a few days after that. I was right.
Wednesday. The day started with my daughter’s deciding she would make eggs over toast just like a video she saw on YouTube. She did it all by herself, and I was pretty impressed with how she made the dish her own by adding scallions and goat cheese. Knowing that Thursday and Friday would have both a meeting and appointment (respectively), I made sure to get the majority of my brief writing done on Wednesday for both of my deadlines. I felt like I hardly came up for air. That evening, we had to get a recording to the church for youth Sunday. My kids worked on a flute-saxophone duet and played Ode to Joy. After a few hiccups we got a decent recording that would be included in Sunday’s service as the postlude.
Thursday. As the week neared its end, I continued to finish up my projects before the afternoon virtual office staff meeting. The meeting was a nice break in the week as well as a good opportunity to hear some friendly voices. After that, I was excited to check the mail and see my new ant guard had arrived!
This is the ant guard we wound up buying:
Friday. The sun finally came out, and I was ready to get back outside. Of course, I had to take my daughter to an appointment first- it was time for her to get a shot, so we had to go in person. Luckily, the doctor’s office had some stringent social distancing policies in place, and when we were finally admitted into the building (no use of the waiting room), we felt reassured that we would be safe. I had a half day of work that day, which I really needed after a week of working overtime to meet my deadlines. And, with the sunny weather, I took the opportunity to walk outside and set up the new hummingbird feeder ant guard. After just a few minutes of installing it, the ants retreated, and I was satisfied. Totally loving this thing and it only needs to be replaced once a season. If it continues to work this well for the rest of the summer, I will be more than happy to purchase another for next year. Finally, before the day was over, we received the Girls Goal Planner from Cultivate What Matters. My daughter was so thrilled with her elementary school graduation gift. And, I’m excited for her to use it. I will definitely be posting a review soon!.
Lessons learned from this week:
Find the humor where you can. This week was rainy and filled with hard work assignments, but that didn’t stop us from looking for opportunities to laugh. Call me cruel, but I got such a kick out of those “twirl a squirrel” videos on YouTube. I sent some to my sister, and her family cracked up as well. I also heard some funny stories about my nephews, which also had us laughing. Look for the funny stuff, and just laugh. It’ll get you through the tough times.
Tracking my wins is motivating. So, I mentioned in a previous post that I started using the monthly spread on in my PowerSheets planner to track my “wins.” Those are basically anything I’ve done during the day that I’m proud of or that has brought me closer to reaching a goal of mine. I am loving using my planner this way as it helps me to end the day on a positive note.
I tend to my goals more consistently when I track them daily. That should seem like an obvious thing, but because filling out my tending sheet takes time, I have had times where I wait until the end of the week, or worse, the end of the month, to fill out my habit trackers. That often left me sometimes guessing at what I did, or didn’t do, on a particular day. Checking in with my tending list daily, however, not only means that I fill in my trackers accurately, I am more likely to get those tasks done because I would rather give myself a check mark than a red X. Using the monthly spread to track my wins has helped me to keep up with filling out my tending sheet on a daily basis, which is a win-win. 😉
As I say every week, I truly hope everyone is doing well wherever they are during this pandemic. Are you feeling unfocused? Are you struggling with your prior goals or are you ready to set new ones? Any suggestions about goal setting you can share? Leave a comment below.
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**Photos by various artist on Pixabay.
