We were very lucky last week to have Vice Admiral Paul Boissier, a former submarine captain, as a guest on one of the Managing Your Furlough sessions we have been running.
Paul spoke about the many months he’d spent at sea—or, to be more precise, a long way under the sea—and explored some of the methods that helped keep himself and his crew positive.
In lockdown, I feel that these simple ideas apply very easily to our lives and thought them worth sharing.
- Keep track of time – know what day it is. On board the submarine, food provided one way of doing this (e.g. fish on Friday).
- Overcome sensory deprivation – find ways to stimulate your senses, e.g. using perfume, stilton, earl grey tea… whatever you like.
- Add something special into every day – schedule in a treat for yourself each day.
- Check in on what you have achieved (even if it seems trivial) at the end of the day.
- Take pride in yourself and your surroundings – shave, clean, tidy.
- Do one thing that will help you grow as a person. Have a clear goal or objective: learn Spanish, take up a new past-time or learn something that will help advance your career.
- Think about and record what you would like to remember, so that you can relate it back when this time is over.
If you bundle all of these ideas together, they lend themselves well to keeping a journal or diary… so crack open a Moleskine and start today.
More than that, use this experience to change your post-lockdown life as well. So many of the things you do now are things you may have wanted to do anyway, but never had time or energy for.
Thank you Paul for some great insights.
David Solomon
Managing Director, Sun and Moon Training