Diligence in Times of Confinement

10 min readMar 29, 2020

There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made.
Prologue of John Carpenter’s 1981 fiction film Escape from New York.

This text is about the current global situation but is not written for the people who are suffering. These words are addressed to different people, the lucky ones who can help the ones in distress.

Some of us have no more significant issues than being away from the streets, going along with our plans remotely, and are now accounting for a few extra hours every day due to the confinement. We have an unusual surplus of time, and, besides money, time is an opportunity.

When all this is over, we will not step out into the same world. Social interactions will need time to go back to normality. Things regarded as good, are proving superfluous. Some movements and ideas, such as climate change denial, are crumbling under the pressure of data about pollution drop. Traveling may not be seen the same way anymore. Changes are accelerating. Some companies are not standing the hit, the economy is suffering a crisis inside a crisis, unemployment is rising, and many new projects will not survive. What is happening is, in a way, a large scale experiment that will return plenty of insights about the way we have been living.

At the same time, new connections are being made. Unique needs have emerged. A different way of looking at the people around us and the world is taking shape. We are discovering new ways of doing things, and in consequence, plenty of opportunities are arising. The experience will transform us profoundly, and in the aftermath, we will see reality differently. A different conception of the world demands new inhabitants, people who understand how to live in it. With the time and the means at our hands, we need to start transitioning into one of those new citizens.

Much has been written about the world’s needs and job market changes. There is consensus about adding the 21st-century skills to the curriculum. However, some generations are already out of the educational system and still struggle when trying to assimilate something new. We know we must update, but we can use a better understanding of how to do it. With the right tools and attitude, almost anything can be learned from experience, study, work, collaboration, and self-reflection.

We sometimes become helpless beings in the hands of time. We abandon ourselves to unhealthy habits: eating, smoking, drinking, watching too much tv… Solitude and confinement can become our worst enemies or our best allies, depending on how we face the situation. I think that we can learn to earn your happiness by living in a meaningful way, putting our resources into what matters to us, and accepting frustration, doubt, and fear as a part of the process of moving forward.

These are what I believe are the key elements to put into practice when starting and going through the shift.

Understand our emotions

Despite the amount of research on how emotions intervene on cognitive processes, behavior, and knowledge and skills fixation, we still have a tough time managing them. It’s understandable because we have a brain that has been evolving for millions of years but is a little behind with a world whose change has been exponentially accelerating in the last century.

Danish school KaosPilot added emotional training into the curriculum. Since the beginning of their three-year program, students are taught to be aware of their emotions and develop their vocabulary to explain them. Labeling emotions gives control to the areas of the brain that handle language and higher functions, and help reduce the fight or flight response. Check your emotional state and label your feelings by writing, talking to yourself, or with somebody.

Embrace failure and frustration. Most of the time, there is no valuable learning without them. While we must trust our capabilities, self-confidence is not related to perfection: we all make mistakes. Self loathe, and criticism takes away from us the chance to learn from failure.

Keep a diary of your advances, no matter how small, and turn to it whenever you need a reminder of your achievements. It’s also important to celebrate each milestone and share them with people. Don’t refuse compliments. Accept and express gratitude for every praise you get and be positive about yourself.

Be careful with the news. Stay away from alarmism and fake news by feeding your curiosity only with reliable sources. If you belong to instant messaging groups that exchange unchecked and nerve-wracking information, consider if you need them in your life.

Take care of your motivation. We get motivated when there is a reward. Rise the expectancy of success by thinking positively and reward yourself. Motivation also decreases when we get distracted or lose focus when driven by impulsiveness.

Self-care

With healthcare systems overloaded, It is not only convenient to stay healthy but also responsible and generous.

Our body deteriorates real quickly with the lack of movement. Plenty of online videos and apps make it very easy to exercise. Yoga and gymnastics don’t require any kind of gear. If you have four empty square meters, you have no excuse. Exercise half an hour a day, and your body will be grateful. Physical work also helps sleep better. Sleep and exercise have a significant role in the fixation of knowledge, the creation of new neuronal connections, and the management of emotions. On top of that, being sweaty will force you to shower regularly and get dressed.

Why not try meditation? Just try a ten-minute session. Maybe it’s for you, and perhaps it isn’t. Do it for a few days in a row and see for yourself.

Keep a healthy diet. Learn to cook. Try new dishes. I will benefit your body, your wallet, and your partner’s happiness. Cooking is an activity that can be shared and is compatible with listening to music, radio, podcast, or audiobooks. You can also try to do batch cooking and improve your home economics.

Focus

The explosion of connectivity and digital devices have laid a landscape where human attention has become a precious commodity. Social media platforms scavenge for our attention in a war to be in the list of the most profitable companies, and it’s a war where we are the only victims. When working or studying, simply put your phone away.

When we are working, we need to stay away from distractions. Multitasking is a harmful fallacy and a useless and unproductive one. Our brain works best when it’s focused on the one thing that matters at any given time. Turn down your phone and don’t check your email or your social media accounts. Find out for how long you can do it. Some people can do it for days, others for a few hours. Anything beyond 30 minutes is already better than constantly shifting your focus. That’s where the Pomodoro technique comes in useful.

Learn

This is a chance to broaden our knowledge, explore subjects and disciplines from realms not related to our background and our expertise. The power of mixing fields of knowledge has proven many times as a very efficient way to innovate.

I strongly recommend Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski’s courses Learning how to learn and Mindshift. They are free, engaging, easy to follow, and loaded with love and practical knowledge on how to learn better. They provide scientific research that demonstrates that, when learning, it is best to interleave different subjects throughout the day in short periods. By doing so, we can accelerate learning, since exercising different skills and knowledge helps generate new neural connections. Half an hour of dedication is not a burdensome commitment and can foster great results if we are disciplined.

Join an online course; there are thousands available on so many subjects.

List people whose ideas are exciting and find ways to learn from them: books, blogs, podcasts and conferences.

Read. You probably have a few books you always wanted to read. If you don’t, there are plenty of scientific papers, ebooks, magazines, and blogs available online.

Collaborate

Interacting with others is more critical than usual. It’s also quite easy. Remote platforms such as miro and MURAL are great for remote collaboration. Others, such as Kosmi, make it a breeze to meet your friends, share activities, and even join strangers in them.

Helping others is an excellent source of satisfaction. There are many initiatives underway, and you can help in some. You can also offer help to your neighbors.

Make a plan

Our commitment is much stronger when we do the planning. Pre-planned activities, instead, go against our will of self-direction. That’s why we should draw our maps.

Set a date to ship and post it somewhere visible. Tell your family and friends about it. Behavioral sciences have found that we are more successful in our commitments when other people know about them.

Trust the process

Find out what works and stick to it. Write it down and put it on the wall to help remember.

If we learn to understand ourselves, and how we work better, how to make the best use of our time to be happy and satisfied, the improvement in our lives will be amazing.

Get the Focus Worksheet and track your time for a day. Conclusions will come up by themselves. Evaluate yourself on a one-day basis for a few days and see how good you do, what can be improved, and what is good as it is.

An hour a day can go a long way if we focus. There is no other way to make the way but one step at a time.

Work. Ship

We are constantly feeding ourselves with ideas, frameworks, skills, knowledge, and mindsets, but we are not taking time to process, apply, produce, and give back. To use these platforms and resources to build on our ideas and create a positive impact.

Most of us have never worked on a personal project, although we all have the means and potential to do great things. Studies prove that above luck, talent, and skill, the keys to success are work, perseverance, self-management, and effort. Not financial, but personal success, happiness. We are vessels of genius who take ourselves for granted and spend most of our lives waiting to be discovered. We can be discovered, but we must be the ones doing it.

Roger Cowdrey’s book Creating an entrepreneurial mindset guides you through an amazing journey through your inner landscape to know yourself, what your inclinations are, where you would like to be and how to start taking steps. It takes more effort than time. I surrendered to it, and after two months, I keep benefiting from the fruits of that work.

In the process, you will have to fight what Seth Godin calls the resistance, a part of us that distracts and sabotages our efforts to exploit our talents. These are some signs, taken from the book Linchpin, that tell when the resistance is winning the battle:

Don’t ship on time. Late is the first step to never
Procrastinate for perfection
Ship defective ideas hoping they will be rejected
Use lack of money as an excuse
Avoid gaining new skills
Obsessive data collection
Join instead of leading
Over Criticize others people work setting an unrealistic bar to your work
Produce work no one can embrace
Ship average work that fits and can be ignored
Criticize the different
Always search for the next big thing. Consider yesterday’s as old
Attach emotionally to the status quo
Engage in anxiety about the new work
Slow down near shipping
Wait for tomorrow
Fear of having ideas stolen. Remember: it’s all about execution
Stop using productive behaviors. Stay with what works!
Announce you have no talent nor luck

Summary

Choose an idea or project, make a plan, commit to it. Set up a routine and stick to it. Keep track of your progress. Believe in yourself. Take care of your motivation. Celebrate wins and accept failures. Don’t quit and keep pushing. Ask for help. Go on. One day it’s done, you ship, publish and share it. And now what? Celebrate and start over with another thing. You may find it addictive, and it may take you somewhere.

Hopefully, in a few years, you will remember this period and talk not about what happened, but about what you did and how it changed you.

These ideas do not belong to outbreak times, but should instead be a part of our lives if we want to have a satisfying life.

If you dare to put these things into action, please tell me if it worked for you: correo@yagobolivar.es

You can also reach me for help setting up a plan, a routine, and following it.

Thanks to Ghislaine Guerin for the inspiration, support and proof reading.