Paula Rizzo, author of Listful Living, shares four ways to stay focused on your goals during lockdown: revisit your pre-COVID goals, identify themes and priorities, cut back and rest to reduce overwhelm, and capture ideas to review later instead of acting on them immediately.
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Hey, Paula Rizzo here, author of Listful Living, and I'm also a media trainer. And I wanted to pop in and say hello because something came to my mind that I thought, you know what, I'm sure if I'm experiencing this, other people are probably experiencing it. And it's the overwhelm of all the helpful information that's out there to help us be more, you know, um productive or be able to make better pies or do yoga better or whatever it is during this COVID-19 lockdown, right? So I get it, the idea that you want to come out of this better than you came in and maybe you can get some skills or read some books or do some things, but there are so many choices and so many things that it actually will derail you and me from our actual goals. So what are your goals? You know, how do we get back to that? So today I'm going to talk about 4 ways to focus on your goals during this time because there's a lot of pressure, uh, you know, self-inflicted pressure really to say, oh, you know what, I'm going to write the next great American novel because I'm home and I should do that. That, that's what I should be doing with this time. Don't go so crazy on yourself. Let's just back up a step. Okay. So I share a lot of these tips and tricks on my website about goal setting and there's a lot about it in my book, Listful Living. But if you go to listproducer.com/ starter kit. I have some lists and, and productivity tips that might be helpful, but I don't want to add to the overwhelm, of course. So here's my tips. Number 1, to be able to focus on your goals and really be less overwhelmed right now, think about what you wanted to do before all of this was going on. Okay, so think back, you know, pre-COVID-19. So now we're all thinking back, maybe January, maybe December, maybe you set some goals for 2020 and you thought, okay, this is what I I really want to do with this year? Obviously things got derailed, but what was on that list? Really sit down, give yourself 10 minutes, set a timer and say, you know what? I'm going to just go through and think about it and think what, what was on my list for this year? Make that list and look at it. Number 2 is to set some themes from those lists, right? From that list, look at it. You know, did you want to connect with your community more or did you want to get healthier or, you know, what was it that was really going to Fill up your 2020 with amazing things. Look at that and then say, "Okay, are the things that I'm doing right now feeding into that priority?" So maybe you're now getting free ebooks and you're on webinars and you're doing all these other things and you have all this excitement around you saying like, "Oh, you know what? I could learn how to knit now and now I could learn how to do that." Was that your priority before this or are you just getting derailed because now we all have shiny object syndrome? Think about it. Think about that. Find those themes and really know, you know, do you really want to do that? Number 3, to focus on your goals, you really need to cut back. One of the things that I talk about in my book a lot is that rest is the new hustle. And so the idea of kind of pulling back and pulling away from all the doing to give yourself some time to breathe and relax and think through, what do I really want to do? One way is to cut down the screen time. So I actually started implementing this a long time ago and I forgot about it because, you know, you get into this COVID-19 quarantine thing and your whole life has just changed. I love to read and I was reading, you know, lots of nonfiction and I would read it before bed and it was terrible for me because I would just get all excited and then I'd be on my phone and I'd be looking things up and I'd start, you know, taking notes on things and then I'd be watching TV and then I'd be looking at my phone and get totally derailed. So I had this rule for myself that I would only read fiction before bed. I had stopped doing it. I just started doing it again this week. Right before I go to bed, I read for about a half hour, whatever fiction book I'm working on. And I find that it really helps me to calm my mind. But also, if you're not seeing all of these things that you could or should be doing, then you're calmer. You don't have all of that stuff in front of you to be thinking like, "Oh, shouldn't I be doing that or shouldn't I be doing that?" Just give yourself a little break. Give yourself a little bit of calm. And then number 4 is to keep track of your good ideas. Okay? So you are going to be inundated with thoughts and ideas and things like that. It's going to happen, right? Instead of acting on all of them, make a list. Find a notebook that you keep this in, or if you want to use Evernote or whatever it is, keep those ideas. Write them down before you jump into action. Before you jump onto the next bandwagon of the next skill that you want to learn and all that, write it down. And then I want you to go back to it in a week, 2 weeks, set it on your alarm, put it on your calendar, and look at it and say, "Do you know, do I really need to learn how to make my own puzzles? Like, is that a thing I really need to do? Do I really need to learn this new skill? Should I really learn how to, you know, create my own online courses?" If that does align with your priorities and the things that you really want to do, it will align in 2 weeks, in 3 weeks from now. So don't make crazy, you know, rash decisions right now because we're in this COVID-19, you know, sort of frenzy of information and overload and everything is on, you know, email, everybody's on their video, everything is— don't make huge decisions. Just give yourself a chance to take track of those good ideas and see, does this really serve me? Is this something that I'm gonna want to do later? You know, so I hope that you take away from this to be able to to really think through what did you want to do before COVID-19 hit? What are your priorities? Let's look forward to the future and say, "OK, you know what? This was my priority before. I still really want to do that. I'm not going to be derailed by all this overload and over-information." And, you know, I really hope that this has been helpful for you. I talk a lot about goal setting in my book Listful Living. If you go to listfulliving.com, you can check that out. And, you know, if you have any other comments or questions, I would love to hear from you. I'll be back here doing some more of these videos. And, you know, I'm hoping that this gets you to the next level of your goal setting. So don't get too crazy with shiny object syndrome. I understand. It happens to me too, but I have to rein myself in, make some lists, reprioritize, and then go forward. All right. See you soon.
