Why Breaking Up Your Goals into Separate Tasks is More Important Than Ever During the Coronavirus

The Coronavirus has fundamentally changed the way we live for the time being. Many people are now confined to their homes and now need to execute their job (s), personal goals, and leisure from the same location or what seems to be an extended period of time. Being confined like this is not conducive to get in work done for most people because you are always one step away from leisure. Back when I was in school I would force myself to get up early and go to the library to get work done, and last summer I tried to get into work by 7 a.m.to ensure that I had time to get work done and no one can bother me. Well I still get up early to try to execute on what I need to do for the day, it is simply not as effective as it was when I could change my location. I've learned that in order to maintain that same level of productivity I need to establish a task to complete so I don't get too distracted. 

The idea of establishing tasks to complete a larger goal is nothing new, but I base my tasks on a learning objective model that I came across a few years ago. in the industry of learning and development, instructors break up learning objectives by taking the high-level integrated objectives (terminal objectives):and breaking them down into what are known as enabling objectives. The enabling objectives act as incremental steps to support the terminal objective. For example, if the terminal objective is cooking dinner then in a set of enabling objectives might be preparing the meat, preparing the vegetables, and preparing a side salad. By breaking up the terminal objective of preparing a dinner into more separate and manageable tasks, it becomes easier to address those tasks in a timely manner. 

The reason why we're talking about this concept today is because it's critically important to remain productive in this time of isolation. Many people's first thought I'm being productive while working from home may involve establishing that home office so they can't get distracted, but that is only half the battle. By creating separate tasks that each incrementally build towards your goals, you can execute them in an isolated and timely manner. the world has fundamentally changed as a result of this isolation and some of the strategies that you've used in the past will simply not be as effective as they were before the pandemic. Knowing this I've been very conscious about creating these smaller tasks to execute on while I am working, relaxing, working again, and living at home. While this isolation may not be the perfect scenario for everyone, it's important to realize that you must work with the circumstances that you're given. In many cases that's going to mean a change in the approach for how things get done. For me making some of these small changes and really focusing on creating these intermittent tasks, has helped me tremendously, and I think I can help you too!